The Last Days of Lauro de Sica
by Thescarredman
Summary: Everyone knows how the story ends. But there's so much more to know.
1. Waiting

Hours past sunset, Elsa sits in her darkened bedroom on a hard wooden chair, toes not quite touching the floor, gazing out her window as she cleans her rifle. Moonlight lies pale upon the scenery, washing out all the greens and browns and oranges of the compound's rooftops and the hills beyond, leaving everything defined mostly in shades of gray. She doesn't notice: her world has been without color for so very long.

Her room is more barren than a prison cell: no rugs warm the plank floor, no decorations relieve the blankness of the walls; there is no furniture save the bunk bed, some hooks on the wall for her clothes – picked out for her long ago by a smiling woman at the Agency whose name Elsa can no longer recall - and the chair on which she sits. She doesn't care about anything that doesn't come to her from his hands, and he gives her nothing.

She has not left this room in two days, since her and Lauro's return from Tuscany. No one has missed her at the dining hall or the classroom or the training ground; there have been no taps at the door or concerned inquiries through its panel. She has always come and gone through this place like a ghost. If Lauro never called for her, she could sit here until she died, and no one would notice. That knowledge never bothered her before, nor does it now, but her reasoning has changed.

Until now, nothing else mattered so long as she was with Lauro. Now, nothing matters.

She glides a cloth along the barrel of her SIG 550 battle rifle, removing the last trace of excess oil from its recent cleaning. She usually cleans her weapons several times between missions, making sure they are as ready to serve him as she, but this time her duty is to the weapon itself, which, she feels, deserves to be left behind in good order. In the past, as she worked, she pretended that the cloth covering the barrel under her hand was his sleeve, feeling a ghostly sort of pleasure as she envisioned walking beside him, her hand tucked between his side and forearm. Sometimes, when she was very certain no one could see, she would caress herself, imagining the gentle hands on her to be his. All such fantasies are done now. She finishes her task and puts the rifle in its case and slides it under the bed, certain she will never use it again.

She picks up the picture in its castoff frame resting on the windowsill, and runs two fingers over its surface. Taken as a throwaway shot by Lauro through the windshield of his car, it shows a narrow slice of sky framed by three-story buildings, part of his rearview mirror, and, in its reflection, a portion of his face: just one eye and ear and a bit of forehead and cheek, but anyone would know in a heartbeat that it is he. One's eye is drawn to his, and then he dominates the composition; having seen him, it is impossible to forget he is there, no matter where else one may look. The portraiture is perfect, she thinks: it is exactly how she perceives him in life. She sets the picture back on the sill, where she can see it as she looks out the window.

Lauro is coming for her. Having called on the way, he will expect to find her waiting in the courtyard when he pulls in, whether five minutes later or an hour; he has never visited her room. No matter. He knows that, even late on a Sunday night, she is ready to be picked up on a moment's notice. All her time is spent either with him or waiting for him, as she is waiting for him now. Standing at the sill close to the wall, she can just look down the back drive to the distant gatehouse, so she will know when he arrives.

She thinks, once again, of the recent mission in Tuscany. The memory no longer brings searing pain, only resignation. She remembers the ordeal of trying not to watch Jose and Henrietta together as they set up for the hit in the clock tower. Her eyes had been drawn to them almost against her will as they gazed out the window together nearly cheek-to-cheek, Jose's palm resting on Henrietta's back, almost holding her. She remembers the strange guilt that had filled her when Lauro first caught her watching them, and her determination not to do it again; the shock and panic when Lauro caught her again at the critical part of the operation, shouting at her to pay attention, and she realized that she was neglecting her work and letting him down. Horror as Lauro ordered her away from her rifle, the end-of-the-world feeling as Jose took _her_ shot. The contempt in Lauro's eyes afterward as he turned from her and, almost as bad, the pity in Henrietta's as she stood watching. The final hammerblow to Elsa's heart during the exfiltration, when Jose missed Henrietta after only a few steps (Lauro never looked back to see if she was following, ever) and _called_ her to him. The long silent ride back to the Agency, so different from the typical silent rides with her handler: usually, she longed for him to speak, but this time she had sat numb with terror that he might.

_Useless_, he'd called her: the most damning word that could come from the mouth of a cyborg's handler, the curse of rejection. She means less than nothing to him. He is her father, her brother, her lover, and her God. And they have all turned their backs on her.

Her life is unendurable; only one recourse remains to her.

And yet.

She can't let go of him.

It is soothing, the almost anesthetic calm that follows her decision, after two awful days of anguish and self-recrimination.

She reaches behind her to the holster at the small of her back. Her fingers curl around the grip of her pistol, her child's hand not quite covering it as an adult's would. Her thumb unsnaps the retaining strap, and she draws it out. She examines it in the moonlight, for the twentieth time tonight: a blue-black SIG P229 loaded with nine-millimeter hollowpoints. She might have preferred a smaller weapon for tonight's work, something with enough power to penetrate a skull but not come out the other side, in order to spare his beautiful face; but, then again, it is supremely important that it be quick and unexpected, and that he not suffer. He'll turn and walk away from her, as always without looking back, expecting her to follow. He won't notice if she's ten steps behind or two; he won't hear her stop to draw and aim. When he's with her, he usually walks hunched with his head down, as if leaning into an invisible wind; that should help. If she's careful, the bullet will enter at the base of his skull and come out above his hairline. She nods to herself. Everything is so much easier when one plans ahead.

The greater risk will come just before, she judges, when she says her goodbye. All her life, she has been waiting for him to notice, waiting for him to understand, waiting for a sign. She has to try to tell him, one last time before the end, what he means to her, but she must be very careful in her phrasing. If she thinks he suspects, she will immediately put the gun to her eye and pull the trigger. As horrifying as is the idea of going into the final dark without him, better that than to let him die afraid of her.

At the gate, headlights appear, high and far-spaced. A large passenger vehicle pauses at the guard shack. The barrier lifts, and the vehicle passes under and trundles down the drive, heading for the courtyard parking lot. She recognizes it: Lauro's Land Rover. She holsters her pistol and turns to retrieve her coat from its hook by the door. The waiting is over.


	2. Maintenance

MINUS NINETEEN

"Don't get me wrong." Lauro de Sica swirled his near-empty glass, making the ice inside spin and cast off little sparkles of light in the dim illumination of the bar. "They're useful, definitely. But I'm never going to fawn all over mine the way some of you guys do. Buying them gifts and taking them on little holiday trips like they're real. Like they mean something to you." He brought the glass to his lips for a final swallow. "I just can't think of them like that."

Beside him, Victor Hilshire gripped his glass, letting the drink warm in his hand while he listened. He'd been a police investigator for years before he'd come to the Social Welfare Agency, and had conducted his share of interrogations. Hilshire knew when a man was reciting an alibi or some other speech he'd made more than once.

He'd also heard plenty of unintended confessions, and lies that told far more truth than the speaker had intended. Sometimes a man who had trouble admitting the truth even to himself would offer a confession couched in a bad lie. Hilshire's cop ears took in his colleague's statement, and automatically translated _I just can't think of them like that _into _I can't help thinking of them like that_.

Hilshire wondered, not for the first time, what Lauro was doing here: in this bar with him, in the cyborg program, in Section Two, even. Lauro was a former Section One field agent who'd injured his back in a fall and was no longer fit for such duty. Hilshire didn't know why Lorenzo would offer the man a job, but he could make a few cynical guesses.

First, it served as a sort of goodwill gesture to Draghi, chief of Section One and a vocal opponent of the cyborg program, showing that, however their opinions differed on tactics, they were on the same side, and took care of their own; second, it stifled some of the contempt expressed by the Section One agents towards the 'puppeteers' who handled the cyborgs. Some of the handlers, like Marco and Raballo, had been washouts from other agencies, outfits for which they could no longer pass the physicals. Comments among the Section One agents about the 'walking wounded' at Section Two letting the 'puppets' do the heavy work had dwindled away after Lauro's transfer.

Hilshire wasn't entirely sure why Lauro had accepted the offer, though. Certainly the pay was an inducement; a fellow couldn't afford a new Land Rover on disability pension. But the man had brought his damnable Section One prejudices with him and hadn't really lost them in all the time he'd been here. He and Elsa worked mostly alone, scarcely cooperating or interacting with the other teams, and, in public at least, he treated his girl like a robot that responded to voice commands.

Lauro was cordial to his Section Two colleagues, but didn't mix with them socially. To Hilshire's knowledge, this was the first time Lauro had ever invited one of them out for a drink. Something in Lauro's demeanor and conversation told him the man was fishing for information of some sort.

As Hilshire lifted his glass, he said, "Question. How did you come up with a name for Elsa?"

Lauro refilled his glass before answering. "My neighbor had a dog named Elsa once. A golden retriever. The hair sort of reminded me."

_Well,_ Hilshire thought, _you've gone Jean and Raballo one better._ Both men had given their cyborgs boys' names: Raballo, to salve his conscience – as if the Agency's treatment of these kids was more palatable if it was done to little boys instead of girls; and Jean, to show that Rico's gender, like all her other humanizing characteristics, was irrelevant. All of the handlers dealt differently, and with different degrees of success, with the knowledge that their little partners were fatally injured or terminally ill girl-children resurrected and 'improved' to make them perfect soldiers and assassins.

He hadn't expected Lauro to reciprocate the question, but apparently the man was trying to be polite. "And yours?"

"Triela? It's Tunisian. For all I know, it could be the one she was born with. We don't know for sure where she came from, but we found her in Amsterdam, and that's where many of the children kidnapped in Tunisia for the slave trade end up; it's an established conduit. She's got the look – skin color, anyway, and there's a small percentage of blonde-blues there, at least. And young girls with her looks are much in demand. Since we know the monsters who tortured her bought her from - " He stopped when he realized his companion was no longer listening. In fact, the way Lauro had turned his back and belted down his drink, he wanted very much _not_ to hear what Hilshire was saying. "Lauro. Have you ever looked through Elsa's file?"

"There's nothing in there for me."

_Which doesn't exactly answer my question, does it?_

Lauro slid off his seat and headed for the bathroom without a word. The barman drew close. "Are you all right for now? Need anything?"

Hilshire eyed the bottle of red he and Lauro were sharing: half full. It was getting late; good sense would suggest they turn in soon. Lauro seemed a little chattier than a quarter bottle would account for; Hilshire wondered if the man was taking painkillers for his back, and how they mixed with alcohol. "Fine, thanks." As the barman began to move away, Hilshire said, "Wait." He glanced around at the little ten-seat bar, occupied by only the three of them after ten at the beginning of the week. A place like this, clean and comfortable and quiet, where they could drink and talk in peace, should have taken some time to find, but Lauro had suggested it as though he knew it well. "Tell me. My friend, does he come here often?"

"Just a few times before," the man said. "He usually meets with another man, though not always the same one." The barman leveled a look at him. "You all work together, I think. The conversations all sound the same, though I won't pretend to understand what your business is, and I'm sure I don't want to. Will that be all?"

A prudent attitude, Hilshire thought, in a country famous for its organized criminals and presently on the verge of civil war besides. "Yes, thank you. Make sure the check comes to me." Hilshire had a feeling Lauro was a lousy tipper.

The man nodded and left. A minute later, Lauro returned from the bathroom. He must have done a lot of thinking in there, Hilshire thought, because as soon as his butt was settled on the seat, he began talking. "They're not kids. They're little Frankensteins. They're mostly plastic and carbon fiber and exotic alloys. Hell, you can't even get one through airport security without flashing your ID. Whatever's in them that's human, it's just components, raw material. They're tools." He refilled his glass.

Hilshire lifted his glass to hide his frown at the thought of Triela being told she wasn't a real person, no matter what she was made of. "How's the operation in Tuscany going?" He said, to change the subject.

"Not bad. I have a lead on a Padania safehouse in Siena the local police pretend they can't find, except when they have guns to sell to the terrorists. I have a feeling the rot may go all the way to the top. I'll stake it out for a few days and decide what to do then."

"You'll be taking Elsa?"

"Of course. Couldn't do it without her."

Hilshire set his glass down. "You ever tell her that?"

Lauro studied him a moment. "I told you, I don't get into that. If you feel the urge to pat yours on the head all the time, go ahead." He took a swallow. "She's easy on the eyes, I grant you. I can see where a man might be tempted. Live and let live."

Hilshire looked him in the eye. "Lauro, when did you last clean your gun?"

The other man frowned. "What?"

"It's a simple question. When was the last time you cleaned your gun?"

"I cleaned it the last time I came back from the pistol range. Maybe a week ago."

"Is that the only time you get out the oil and brushes?"

"No," the man said, a little indignant. "My life might depend on my piece. If it's been awhile since the last cleaning, I'll break it down, just to be sure. What are -"

The ex-Europol cop tossed back his drink. "What does the gun care if it's dirty? It's just a thing." He watched Lauro's face cloud, but before the man could speak, he went on. "You say your cyborg is just a tool. A whole lot more useful than a pistol, but still a tool. Fine. But a cyborg is a lot more complex than a gun, too. They have requirements that need to be satisfied in order for them to function properly. And I'm not talking about food and water, or bullets for their guns."

He brought the glass down to the bar's surface with a _crack_ that made the ice inside jump above the rim. The startled barman looked his way. "They don't have keypads in the backs of their heads for you to type in instructions, man. What motivates them to obey, to learn, to fight and risk their lives?" He took a breath, calmed himself, and reached for the bottle. He poured another, and topped off Lauro's glass, then pushed the bottle down the bar, out of the other agent's reach. He stared into Lauro's sullen face. "Nothing but their handlers' approval. The doctors stole their memories of anyone else they might ever have loved, just so they'd imprint on us like puppies, so they'd do what we asked. But a dog learns obedience from soft words more than harsh ones. If that was all _you_ were working for, how long do you think you'd go on without it, eh?" He beckoned to the barman and reached for his money clip. "You're neglecting your equipment, Lauro. Your living weapon. How long do you think you can keep using it without maintenance before it jams up or explodes in your face?"


	3. Double Game

THIRTEEN

Lauro brought the Land Rover to a stop in an alley behind the safehouse. "All right. Go in and check the setup. If it's the same as yesterday, I'll probably green-light the op. Remember the plan."

"Right," Elsa said, and pushed the passenger door open.

"Got the camera?"

"Yes." She pulled it out of her coat and, as always, presented it for inspection. He checked to make sure a fresh roll of film was loaded in and handed it back. She'd never forgotten, but it was important, he thought, to make sure she knew he was checking up.

In this age of digital photography, it was getting difficult to find film for the old SLR, and the technicians at the Agency's imaging lab grumbled every time they had to pull the dust cover off the developing equipment for him – which were the exact reasons Lauro preferred it. The specialized equipment, specialized knowledge, and special paper necessary to the process meant that he could more tightly control the risk of unauthorized copies. He knew that a digital camera would have let him print the pictures himself, but he knew that printers had buffer memories, and he was afraid that someone with more expertise than he had might gain access to it. So he sent Elsa to the lab with the film, making her wait for a single set of the prints from the moment it left her hands. He insisted on knowing which tech handled the job, and demanded the negatives be returned to Elsa the moment he was done with them.

She turned in the seat and scooted towards the opening, trying to get her feet on the ground before her butt left the seat. She didn't quite make it; the Rover sat too high off the ground for a twelve-year-old's legs. She slid out of the seat and dropped a few centimeters to the pavers. She turned around, but, instead of opening the rear passenger door for the Amati case that held her assault rifle, she stood at the open front door looking at him.

He hated when she did that. He didn't like meeting her eyes. When she stared at him, they seemed to get bigger and shinier, until he could see his reflection in them. That bothered him most of all, because the image he saw there wasn't the same one he shaved every morning.

He lifted her case off the floor behind her seat, ignoring the twinge in his back, and pushed it at her. "Get going. Don't waste time."

She turned away, blonde braids swinging under her beret. As soon as she disappeared around the corner, he picked up a magazine and pretended to read it, masking his lower face, as he punched a number into his phone from memory. "It's me."

"_What's your status?_" Draghi asked.

"I'm about to raid the safehouse in Siena. My man inside says a portion of the gun money is finding its way into the police chief's hands, so I'll have to deal with that as well."

"_Has anyone recognized you?_"

"My informant. No one else." Lauro had once been very active in Tuscany as a Section One agent, and had become known well enough that it had become difficult to move freely. But it hadn't taken long for word to spread among the Padania that he'd left Section One disabled, and Draghi had made sure they'd been able to acquire his medical records to confirm it. Crawling under the cyborg program's cloak of secrecy had erased his tracks as effectively as faking his own death would have. "I'm keeping a low profile. The cyborg does my recon, and I meet with people only on the phone."

"_The police chief. Go to him with what you know. Offer him a deal for information._"

Lauro shifted the phone. "I'll try, but I don't think that will fly. He's too sure we can't touch him. At least that's what my man says."

"_Who's your 'man inside'?_"

"Undercover cop, Special Operations. I threatened to expose him if he didn't share his information." He shifted the phone to his other ear. "Don't know how much longer that threat will mean anything. I don't think he's given a decent report to his superiors in a long time. The guy sounds suspiciously sympathetic to the Republican view. He just might tell them himself."

"_Along with everything he knows about us. Forgetting which side you're on, that's a big risk in undercover work. You start going to their weddings and christenings and meeting their sisters, and before you realize, you're more comfortable with them than with the people you work for._" The Section One Director's voice sounded a little muffled; Lauro figured the man was talking around one of his fancy chocolates. "_Make any new friends at work lately?_" Which was two questions in one: _are __you__ forgetting who you work for?_ And:_ anything juicy to report?_

Lauro stirred uncomfortably, and not from the ache in his back that told him he was overdue for his meds. He wished he'd never mentioned the little observation he'd made in passing, that none of the handlers had a wife, or even a serious relationship. _Probably worried their little girlfriends will be jealous_, he'd joked, but Draghi had jumped on it and ordered him to pursue it. "Not yet. I took the likeliest candidate out to a bar a few nights ago and prodded him a little, trying to get him to say something. Hilshire."

"_The German? We've met. Lorenzo sends him over as a go-between when we have to work together on something. I suppose, since he's a foreigner, he's expected to be above the politics. What makes you think that cold fish is playing games with his cyborg?_"

"Effectively, they're the senior team, been together for years. And she's old enough, barely. It seemed like my best bet. But if he's poking his little puppet, he's too smart to blurt it out over a few drinks." He glanced at his watch. Elsa should be checking in soon. "There's another one has rumors swirling around him. His cyborg is too young for that kind of nonsense, but he spends a lot of his off time with her and showers her with gifts. Seems unhealthy."

"_His name?_"

"Croce, Jose Croce. His brother Jean is the chief handler."

Another muffled reply. "_Check into it. Even if it's only kiss-and-cuddle, it would be useful to us._" A pause. "_You know I'd rather we were arresting these men._"

Lauro shifted, even more uncomfortable. For a moment, he'd thought Draghi was talking about Section Two. Then he realized the Section One chief had gone back to the earlier subject. "It's not the way Section Two works, you know that. I thought their methods were one of the reasons I'm here."

"_It is. But … when you take down the safehouse, make sure you get everyone. You don't want to leave witnesses._"

"So … do the cop too?" But as soon as he said it, he saw the logic of it. With the Padania cell gone and the police chief compromised, the man's usefulness was ended and he became nothing but a liability, especially if he really was sliding towards the Republican cause.

"_Yeah_," Draghi said reluctantly."_It's a perfect opportunity. No one knows you're there. But don't get careless out there, okay?_"

Lauro knew that when his chief said, 'out there', he wasn't just talking about Tuscany; he was talking about Section Two. There were rumors about a handler name of Raballo who'd had an attack of conscience or something and had been 'retired' with a hit-and-run accident. If that cold bastard who ran S2 ever found out Lauro had joined his little gang as an informer, there might be another.

Draghi added, as always, "_Be sure and get photos when the job's done._"

Lauro had no idea what Draghi did with the photographs, but every time Elsa went out on a 'wet' assignment like this one, the man insisted on a graphic record of her handiwork, the messier the better. "Got it." He disconnected.

Elsa called in, and he gave her her instructions. After he hung up, he tapped in a number written in the margin of the magazine's editorial page, one that his reluctant informant had provided him. It was time to have a little chat with the chief of police on his private line, one that was guaranteed to stiffen the old bastard's spine and make him unreasonable, especially since he'd likely hear about the raid shortly after Lauro hung up and learn that a chunk of his income stream was gone.

In this, Lauro was playing a dangerous game. He knew Draghi wouldn't approve of simply taking out a top cop, that he'd rather see a Padania collaborator in a position of trust turn state's evidence or, failing that, to arrest and prosecute him in a very public trial. But Lauro didn't think much of the State's chances for a conviction, and he doubted the crooked official had much information to give them. Better to make an example of him, he thought; in this, he supposed, he'd been seduced by the attitudes of the people he now worked with. But, what the hell. Their methods might be twisted, but they had a few good ideas. And as long as Section Two was willing to do the dirty jobs like this one and take the heat for them, why not let it?

"Good morning, Mr. Bartoli," he said when the chief picked up, deliberately omitting the man's title. "How's the badge-for-sale racket going?"

"_Who is this?_"

"Someone the government sent to take out the garbage. You've been a very bad boy, Mr. Bartoli. Too bad. I heard you were a good cop once."

"_Listen, you. I don't know how you got this number, and I don't know who you think you are, but if you harass me anymore, you'll be sorry. Do you know who I am?_"

"You're the scumbag betraying the public trust to lick the shoes of the Padania, all for a bribe scarcely bigger than your pension. Hardly seems worth what you're risking. Or did you think your friends could keep a secret?"

"_You don't frighten me. If you were a government agent, you'd act, not bluster. Is this a shakedown?_"

"No, it's a last warning. And you'll soon see I don't bluff."

"_Threatening a police officer is a State crime. If that doesn't impress you, perhaps I could have some people talk to you._"

Lauro chuckled into the phone. "Listen to you, threatening to arrest me with one breath and have me killed with the next. You know, a police chief shouldn't have such a hard time deciding whether he's working for the government or the terrorists." He went on in a different tone, "You keep getting in my way, and I will go. Right. Through you. You see, I remember what my job is."

Just as he disconnected, the little killer returned from her job. She tapped on his window and called his name, and he swallowed hard before he rolled it down, because her voice was high and sweet and she was giving him a little girl's smile that could make you smile back unthinking.

"Are you finished?" He asked gruffly. A stupid question; he wasn't hiding his unease too well, he decided. Somewhere on the third floor of the building this smiling twelve-year-old had just left was a room with a smashed door and half a dozen corpses inside.

But she seemed not to notice. "Yes, sir. Everything inside went just as you planned." She sounded pleased with her day's work, and with his. Or, maybe, just sucking up? After all, the slickest part of the plan had been hers.

He'd sent Elsa in and out of the building for four days, traveling the halls until she became part of the background to staff and residents, and past the door of the leased suite on the third floor as often as he'd thought he could get away with without arousing suspicion. He'd questioned her in detail about the layout around that door, but had planned Elsa's one-cyborg assault on the safehouse without asking her opinion once. The 'plan' had been a simple frontal assault using speed and surprise to carry Elsa into the rooms, gun blazing, before those inside could react properly. The sticky part had been the door guard sitting in the hallway with a clear view of the hall and stairs, who'd watched her the whole time she'd been in view on her recon missions. The best solution Lauro could come up with was to order her to approach him, relying on her disarming appearance, and take him out by hand or with a contact pistol shot, then rush like hell to break out her SIG before those inside were alerted that they were under attack.

"Yes, sir," she'd said; she'd have given the same answer if he'd told her to go in weaponless and blindfolded. "If you think that's better than using the elevator."

She'd mentioned the elevator earlier, twice in fact, but he'd never asked her its position relative to the safehouse guard. It turned out that the elevator doors opened directly opposite where Elsa's first target sat, providing her surprise and a clear shot from cover just three steps from the door. That little datum had made the difference between a clean operation and a possibly very messy one. But it had still been 'his' plan.

Irritated, he said, "You got the photos?"

She seemed taken back. Apparently, she'd been looking for a different response - a pat on the head, maybe? She should know him better than that by now. She reached into her coat pocket and handed him the camera.

He saw immediately that she'd left an exposure untaken. He had a momentary impulse to point the camera at her and press the shutter button before he realized. _What the hell would I do with a picture of Elsa? And what would Draghi think if I'd accidentally left it in the envelope with the others?_ Irritated, he said, "There's still one exposure left." Another odd impulse, this time to hand her back the camera and tell her to take a picture of whatever she liked. But he had an uneasy suspicion about what she might choose to photograph. "Next time, shoot the whole roll." He pointed the camera up through the windshield at nothing and clicked the shutter.

It was time to move. Elsa's rifle was unsilenced, and Lauro was fairly certain he'd have heard gunfire from the raid if he hadn't had the windows up while he talked on the phone. Right now, behind any number of doors on the third floor, people were looking through their peepholes and wondering who had just shot whom, and whether it would be prudent to call the police. He started the car. "Let's go."

On the road back to Rome, he said without looking at his passenger, "Has any of the other cyborgs approached you?"

"No, sir," she said, her voice flat and emotionless once more.

"Good. Stay away from them as much as possible." It was an instruction he gave her every time they returned to headquarters. The last thing he needed was one of the little killing machines picking up clues about what he was up to from Elsa and telling her handler.

-0-

Tomasso Draghi hung up the phone and washed down his last Godiva with a sip of coffee. Then he picked up the phone again and called his personal assistant, telling him to call Lorenzo's personal assistant and set up a call. It was the way the game was played: God forbid that either of the section chiefs should just pick up the phone and call the other; what if the one being called was too busy to answer? The caller simply couldn't risk the loss of face. He scoffed at the ridiculousness of it, but he followed the rules as if they meant something to him.

Thirty seconds later, his assistant rang through to say the call was set up. Draghi smiled, imagining Lorenzo's hand poised over the phone, waiting for him to connect. He snatched up the phone, pressed it to his ear, and immediately began speaking. "Director, I have a request," he said quickly.

"_Always glad to help out,_" Lorenzo replied. Apparently he'd been waiting with the phone to his ear instead. "_What can Section Two do for you, Director?_"

"I have an operation spooling up in Milan shortly. I know Section Two has a presence there as well, so I'd like you to send over your liaison man for a brief. Don't want our people shooting each other by accident, eh?"

"_No, indeed. When shall I send him over?_"

"Tomorrow or next day, anytime that's convenient." Wouldn't do to be too eager; this mustn't seem important. "I've got no meetings out of the office scheduled then. If I'm busy when he arrives, I promise not to keep him waiting long."

They hammered out a few details, and hung up with the exaggerated cordiality practiced by only the most bitter of enemies. Draghi took another sip of his coffee, which was now cool. He'd been told before by his staff that Hilshire always came to headquarters with his cyborg, which he left waiting in the squadroom. After the briefing, he'd walk Hilshire to the door and see the two of them together, and decide about them for himself.


	4. Observations

TWELVE

In the lecture hall, Rico frowned and bent once again over her workbook. Class time was so hard to get through sometimes, harder for her than for the other girls. Not because she was stupid or anything; Dr. Bianchi said standardized IQ tests didn't work well on cyborgs, and especially not on her, but he was certain she was plenty smart. But she was coming from so far behind. Formal schooling, like sunshine, had been scant the first eleven years of her life. The other girls had come through conditioning minus their personal memories, but with their basic skills mostly intact; they'd all remembered how to read. Rico had never really learned.

Not that she'd been totally uneducated. She knew the hospital prices for a hundred items and procedures, learned from her father as he shouted at her mother, both of them two meters on the other side of a thin fabric curtain that they seemed to think provided them privacy. She knew how to describe pain to a nurse, and how to endure a botched IV or catheter insertion without complaining. She knew how to read a medical monitor and several other pieces of life-support equipment. And, most useful of all, she'd learned how to reach for the next breath when her lungs – her whole body, really - had felt ready to quit.

The Tuesday midmorning class was instruction in German, which meant Triela's handler, Hilshire, was playing instructor. Some of the other Agency staff who taught school, like Dr. Bianchi, the chief psychiatrist, and Dr. Donato, one of the prosthetic surgeons, had been teachers' aides when they were undergraduates; they taught science classes, and made the work fun and not too hard. But Rico was certain that, whatever Hilshire had been before he came to the Agency, he had never been a teacher. He spent most of his time talking to the blackboard, his lecture voice was a drone that lulled you to sleep, and his idea of engaging the students was to warn them to pay attention. If not for Triela's help – she was kind of bossy and full of herself, but she was kindly, and she spoke her handler's first language like a native, naturally – Rico would never make it through a class with him. As it was, her attention sometimes wandered, and she felt it was a very good thing that the lecture hall had no windows to look out of.

Everyone was in their usual places, except for Angelica; Rico supposed she was back at the hospital getting some treatment or other. Hilshire discouraged them from sitting together, so they were all seated in different sections of the near-empty room, which was built like a little stadium so the students in the back rows could see over the ones in front. Claes, who had probably read the whole textbook already, sat primly in the floor-level front row right behind Hilshire. Rico sat about halfway up. Henrietta, the shortest of them, was up near the top where she could see everything. Triela, who had nothing to learn here, circulated among them, providing the real instruction. Elsa sat in the front row as well, but way off to the side, where she could turn her back on the rest of them, Rico supposed.

She stuck gamely with it for some time – Jean thought it would be useful for her to learn German, and being useful to Jean was the guiding star of Rico's life – but, after awhile, she found herself watching Elsa, who seemed almost as distracted as she.

Elsa-watching was something of a hobby for Rico. The girl was impossible to get to know, but that didn't stop Rico from making observations. She wondered if anybody else had ever noticed that Elsa owned only one set of clothes, and washed them an item or two at a time. Rico noted a tiny spot of fresh blood darkening the right sleeve of Elsa's long shirt, and guessed the girl had gotten shot again; the girls were all trained to shield their eyes with their free arms in a firefight. Both of the shirt's lower sleeves were hashed with repair work that looked rough compared to Henrietta's almost invisible stitching. Rico was pretty sure Elsa had never visited the infirmary after a mission, which meant that her forearms must be a mess; artificial tissue might stop hurting and bleeding quick, but it didn't heal.

Why didn't Lauro take her in for repairs? Was she afraid of hospitals? Rico could sympathize. She could sympathize, too, with the too-long stares that the girl, sitting alone at her table in the dining hall, sometimes gave the others as she watched them talking and smiling together. Rico knew Elsa's isolation was self-imposed, but she also knew what it felt like to be surrounded by people and still alone. The hospital bed had been like that.

"Rico," Hilshire said in warning tones.

She started and turned back to face the blackboard. _Not my business,_ she told herself. _It has nothing to do with me._

-0-

Triela left class just before it ended and positioned herself right outside in the hall, knowing Elsa would be the first out the door when Hilshire released the students. When the little blonde stepped into the corridor, Triela called, "Elsa."

The girl's face closed up. She hugged her books to her chest, and Triela realized that she'd done the same thing. _Shields up; not a promising start to the exchange. _"What do you want?"

"I want to know why you're still angry. I told you, we weren't chatting. It wasn't even a conversation, really. He just wanted to ask me some questions." She added, trying to be reassuring, "We weren't talking about you, if that's what you're thinking." Instantly, some intuition told her she'd said exactly the wrong thing.

The girl looked up at her with her odd brown-green eyes, eyes the color of a pond you wouldn't want to swim in because you couldn't tell what was in it. "You were smiling."

"He asked me about Hilshire. Is it so strange I'd smile when I talk about him?"

"Fine." She started to walk past.

"No, it's _not_ fine." Triela sidestepped, blocking the way. "If you have a problem with me, leave it at the classroom door, Elsa. The others don't need the distraction. Some of them are having enough trouble with the material as it is. You could be picking it up easier, too, if you weren't so set on showing you don't need my help."

"Lauro doesn't care if I can speak German, or solve algebra problems either. School is just a place I have to go when I'm not working. I should be on the training ground instead."

"There's such a thing as overtraining, Elsa. You learn things you don't have an immediate use for to keep your mind flexible. Besides," she added, looking for a way to reach the girl, "just because Lauro doesn't need you to speak German today, it doesn't mean he won't need you to know it tomorrow."

"He smiled at you."

Triela blinked at the change of subject; it was as if Elsa hadn't been listening at all. "What?"

"When you were talking. I saw it."

She frowned. "I'm sure he was just being polite. I didn't notice."

Elsa's book slid down her front as her grip loosened. "Didn't notice. How could you _not_ notice, if he smiled at you?"

_Oh, she's got it bad_, Triela thought. "I have my own," she said quietly. She was sure Elsa knew what she was talking about. Over Elsa's shoulder, she saw Claes slip out the door and head the opposite way down the hall, headed for Raballo's old room, no doubt, to pick up a book on the way to the dining hall. "And if I didn't, I wouldn't want one, I think."

-0-

Claes knelt in the soft earth of her garden, scooping dirt around her latest addition. She glanced at the man's chronograph on her wrist, the face an assortment of dials, the big metal band clasped over her sleeve so it wouldn't slip around. Without looking up, she said, "You've been standing there for ten minutes. If you don't want to talk, that's fine. But stop skulking in the shadows. It's impolite."

Under the eaves of the covered walkway, Elsa stirred. Claes was certain the girl would turn and leave, but instead she moved into the open and stood watching from a few feet away.

"You don't have to stand," Claes said, still head-down as she began to dig another hole. "The garden wall makes a perfect seat."

Elsa made no move toward the low red-brick wall that ran along one side of the little rectangular plot. She stood watching silently.

Ignoring her visitor, Claes took a deep breath, inhaling the scent of the soil and growing things. She was very glad Jean had given her permission to build this little retreat where she spent so many quiet hours, sometimes visited by the other girls and Priscilla, but usually with only the day for company. Jean supported her in other ways, too, providing clothes and all the sundry small items the Agency didn't. He'd told her more than once to come to him if she needed anything, and often inquired about her work and hobbies; he seemed more accommodating to her than to Rico, his own 'sister'. But it was nevertheless difficult to feel any gratitude towards that stern man whose mind always seemed filled with secret thoughts. Jean was in overall charge of the cyborgs, after all, and Claes had no one else to look after her. She'd been told that she'd once had a handler, Captain Raballo, who'd been Jean's commander in the Carabinieri before Jean had come to the Agency. That might be enough to explain Jean's solicitude, but Claes had a feeling there was more to it. Whether or not that was true, it certainly wasn't affection that led him to watch over her.

A green shoot poked out of the ground where she knew she hadn't planted anything. She gripped it between her fingertips, pulled it out of the ground by its tiny root, and examined it. She set it aside to compare to the pictures in her gardening books. Looking over the roof of the nearest building, she saw a hawk keeping station in an updraft somewhere over the training ground. The bird was a regular sight, and, as always, it gave Claes a faint sense of longing she couldn't identify. She supposed it was just a sort of envy, wondering what the view was like from such a vantage.

She heard, very faintly, the echoing report of a pistol, two- and three-round bursts followed by pauses, over and over. One of the girls was practicing close combat in the killing rooms – she was certain it was a cyborg: the reports told her the shooter was moving and changing magazines too fast to be anything else. She wondered which of them it was: Rico, she guessed, since the chipper little blonde had spent the entire afternoon yesterday at sniper practice with her Dragunov, and would be full of pent-up energy that Jean would be quick to dispel. Besides, all that running and jumping and quick shooting appealed to Rico's tomboyish nature, making her flushed and happy. Claes would know soon enough, of course, when the girls got together for dinner, and one of them came into the big room with the scent of gunpowder clinging to her. She smiled.

Elsa said suddenly, "What's it like?"

Claes looked back. Elsa hadn't moved; Claes had nearly forgotten she was there. "What's what like?"

Elsa hesitated, as if she'd regretted speaking. "Not having a handler."

_What's it like having a handler who doesn't care if you live or die?_ Claes bit back the words and pushed down the odd surge of anger that was so at odds with her usual serene demeanor. But talk of loneliness and absent handlers seemed to trigger a response that made her feel like a different person. "I really don't know what it's 'like'. I don't have anything to compare my life to, except for what I see."

The little blonde frowned. "See?"

Claes bent her head to her task once more. "The rest of you. You can't remember being without a handler. I don't remember having one." She placed the little plant in the second hole and tucked the dirt in. She rose, intending to pick up her watering can and give her newest additions a first drink. "My life is full and rich. If I lack for something, I don't miss it. Sometimes I feel like I'm waiting for something, but I don't know what for, and I'm in no hurry for it." She studied the little brick wall. _I could build three more just like it,_ she thought. _There are books on masonry in my library. Jean would provide me with the bricks and mortar with no more than a question or two. I could surround my garden, keep it safe._

_Keep it safe?_

"If my handler died," Elsa said, "I'd kill myself."

Again that surge of anger, this time too strong to stifle. "You might as well. You're no use to anyone else."

-0-

The Agency's outdoor firing range was located at the back of the training ground, far from any public roads. It was surrounded by a high concrete wall topped with barbed wire, safe from prying eyes and ears. Unlike the indoor range, cyborgs were permitted to practice here without their handlers, provided they had permission. Nevertheless, there was usually a handler observing whenever one of the 'girls' was on the range, either on the firing line or in the observation tower.

Up in the tower, Jean watched Elsa practicing alone, hammering away at man-sized targets thirty meters distant with her assault rifle, emptying and reloading magazine after magazine from the boxes of five-five-six on the bench behind her and moving from one target to the next as each got too chewed up to be of use. Lauro was nowhere in sight, which wasn't unusual; no one had seem him at the facility with Elsa since her early training. But Elsa practiced as diligently as if her handler was at her elbow. Jean admired her dedication. He trained his binoculars on her last target and nodded in satisfaction at the tight groups.

Lauro and Elsa's working relationship was an unusual one, he decided, but effective. Unlike some of the fratelli, whose too-close relationships had given rise to concerns, those two seemed to be all business, like him and Rico. They'd made a serious dent in Padania presence in Tuscany, and might be on the verge of kicking the RF out of that region entirely. He'd originally opposed giving one of Section Two's cyborgs to a Neanderthal from Section One, but it seemed to have worked out very well. He could wish Jose and Henrietta were more like Lauro and Elsa.

-0-

"He's handsome, sure," Ferro said to her table companion. She looked over Priscilla's shoulder at another table in the dining hall where Jean Croce sat with his cyborg, Rico, and the senior handler, Marco Toni. "And cultured as well. He might make an entertaining dinner date. But past that, no."

Priscilla sipped from her teacup, the last item remaining from her lunch. This late in the day, the meal had been cleared away and most of the tables were empty. "Too intense? He's certainly dedicated."

Ferro picked at her salad while she considered her answer. Pri was pretty and outgoing, and could likely attract the interest of any man she wanted. But she was Ferro's friend, and Ferro didn't want to see her hurt. The Section Two 'fixer' decided that Silla needed an honest opinion instead of a bland safe statement. "No. Not dedicated. At least, not the way you mean it. You heard about his family?"

"His father was a judge, right? Killed in his car by an FRF bomb."

"And his mother, and sister, and fiancée."

"Oh. That's … _horrible_."

"It's the real reason he's here. Idealism is in short supply at Section Two, Silla. Jean wants to kill every man or woman who ever took up arms for the Republican cause. That's his motive and his mission. Joining the Agency basically gave him a hunting license and all the tools he needs." She lifted her water glass to her lips for a swallow. "Including us. And he still mourns his sweetheart, I think. Like I said, not a good prospect."

Priscilla looked down into her cup. "What about his brother Jose? No idealism there, either?"

Ferro shook her head. "He's just Jean with a conscience." She sipped her water again. "All the handlers are damaged goods, really."

"Marco, too? I've known him for years, Ferro. He's a sweet guy."

"You see him the way he was, Silla, not the man he's changed into." Ferro watched Jean's sandy-haired companion take off his glasses to wipe at them with his napkin. "He was pushed out of the State Police after a training accident that messed up his eye."

"I know. So …"

"So he needs to prove he's not a cripple, that he's still accomplishing important things. That's one reason Angelica's setbacks have him so on edge. He feels like she's holding him back."

Priscilla crossed her arms on the table. "Poor Angie. They learned so much from her." Meaning that the doctors and techs had made a great many mistakes with their very first cyborg. Lacking data, they'd overdosed her on the conditioning drugs, leading to early impairment of her memory and motor control. And her first implants, while very effective, had experienced high failure rates, leading to further debilitating surgeries. "It's not her fault."

"No, but her failures still gall her handler." Ferro sipped her water. "While, at the same time, they freshen his guilt over using her. A very conflicted man."

"Like Raballo," Priscilla said. "What about Hilshire?"

"Our silent German? He's a question mark, I grant you. But he's not here to see democratic socialism triumph over right-wing reactionaries in the north of Italy. His reasons for being here are as personal as anyone's."

Priscilla leaned forward. "What about you, Ferro? Why are you here?"

"Well, the pay is nice. So is the opportunity to make full use of my talents. It beats playing secretary to some bureaucrat, doing all his grunt work for centesimi per day. And I think the Northerners have had things all their way long enough."

"The new guy, Lauro. What do you make of him?"

Ferro wrinkled her nose. "He has the manners of a used-car salesman. I feel like a conversation with him is never casual, that there's always something lying under the surface."

Silla smiled into her cup. "Maybe he just wants you."

"If that's his style, it's no wonder he's alone. His condescension is about as appealing as day-old eggs. You can tell by the way he looks at all of us that he feels stuck here, that he's waiting for a better offer. And I think if Elsa was just a little girl, the way he treats her would border on abuse." Ferro picked up her fork again, but didn't address her near-empty plate, just held the instrument in three fingers. "Some ways, Raballo was the worst of them. He came here intending to stay only three years. That should have been enough to keep him out of the cyborg program – I mean, what were we going to do with his girl after he was gone? - But Jean wanted him on his team. He tried to stay detached – I'm sure that's why he named her Claes, to distance himself from her - but I don't think he managed it. I think that three-year deadline started to look less realistic as it drew closer, and made him rethink his ambitions. I don't know if his leg injury was the cause, but he was a very angry man. He held a lot of violence just under the surface. I think that's why he occupied himself with quiet pastimes like reading and fishing, to help still the demons." She placed her fork on her plate and pushed it aside. "He told me once, before that incident at the shooting range, he was thinking of putting in a garden on the Agency grounds for him and Claes."

Priscilla's eyes widened. "She doesn't _remember_, does she?"

Ferro shook her head slightly. "The memories are gone. But her heart remembers." Her attention shifted back to the table where the two handlers sat talking. Rico sat in attendance beside Jean, staring straight ahead and looking like a proper little robot. "They're not machines. Inside each of those reinforced skulls is the brain of an adolescent girl, and most of them have all their glands and organs as well. But they're not little girls, either, and not just because of what we did to them. You've seen their files. They parted ways with childhood before they ever came to us. Some of them needed the conditioning regimen just to make them functional again." She watched Jean, deep in conversation with Marco, absently put a hand to the back of Rico's neck, lightly gripping, and Rico, just as unconsciously, dip her chin to stretch her neck, making it easier to grasp. The exchange might have been paired gestures of affection … or a show of dominance and submission. "They think and feel, but _how_ they think and feel is something we shouldn't take for granted. And their relationships with their handlers simply aren't normal to a grown man and a little girl."

"_Ferro._ None of them would _ever_."

"Of course not. The people spreading those rumors are idiots. I've been with them all since the beginning, too. I saw the bonds form. Their relationships aren't father-daughter, or brother-sister, or girlfriend-boyfriend. Still. I don't know whether it's cause or effect, but it's no coincidence none of those men has found a grown woman to love."


	5. Discoveries

ELEVEN

Triela hated these visits to Section One. She understood why Hilshire made her tag along, of course: sometimes they received assignments here, which Hilshire was always eager to clear off his table as quickly as possible; when that happened, they would start work straight from Director Draghi's office if they could. And she understood why he always had her wait in the outer offices, in sight of over a dozen occupied desks, while he went inside alone: everyone knew the chief of Section One hated cyborgs. The trouble was, that contempt was shared in diluted form by all his men, who didn't make much effort to hide it. Being in an enclosed space with a pack of them made her feel more on-edge than most shootouts. So whenever Hilshire left her in the squadroom, she stayed close to the door, put her back to the wall, avoided eye contact, and pretended not to notice the glances and sidelong looks, nor hear the comments passed back and forth, pitched just below the threshold of unaugmented hearing. Mostly.

Not often, but occasionally, one of those low-pitched conversations would make reference to her looks, or include strange remarks. She didn't always understand them, exactly, but she knew what they were about. The cyborgs all got regular physicals; early in her life at the Agency, she'd begun to experience what Doctor Bianchi described as her 'monthly event', which he'd said was normal. She'd gotten a package of supplies to deal with her problem, along with simultaneous facts-of-life lectures from him and Priscilla. Priscilla's version had been clearer and far more practical, Triela thought, but the Doctor's had had its points. "I considered prescribing a contraceptive for you," he'd said. "Since all the damage was repaired and your reproductive system's fully functional again." Ignoring a dark look from Priscilla, he'd gone on, "So you're capable of conceiving a child, even though you're not fully developed and carrying one to term would be very risky for you. But I don't like adding an unnecessary drug to your med regimen. And it isn't as if you're going to … have an opportunity."

Behind him, Priscilla had rolled her eyes. After the checkup was concluded, Silla had met her in the hall outside the offices. "If you ever meet someone, and it looks like things are headed that way for you, sweetie, come see me first, and I'll get you taken care of. I promise."

Hostility, Triela could handle, especially if the hostile parties were trying to kill her. But the knowing eyes and smiles among the Section One men made her feel threatened in a way she didn't know how to deal with.

After trying to blend into the squadroom wall for awhile, her mind drifted, and her thoughts returned to the big event of this morning, which had occurred after Hilshire had picked her up but before they'd arrived here: her first-ever visit to his apartment.

Hilshire, like all the other handlers, had a dorm room on campus. He used the cabinets and computer in there, and sometimes dropped into its little cot for a nap, but he almost never spent the night. He rented rooms in Rome, somewhere on the Via Flaminia not far from the river.

Early this morning, she'd received a call from Ferro telling her that Hilshire would be picking her up. She'd dressed hurriedly, grabbed her pistol and the case containing her trench gun, and met him at the reception desk. He'd looked tired and uncharacteristically rumpled, as if he'd been up all night.

"We're going to Section One at ten," he'd said as they'd walked to the car. "It's early, but I need to go to my place first. I thought I'd save time picking you up on the way."

She'd nodded. The Agency campus lay twenty kilometers north of the city, Section One headquarters about five; apparently he'd spent the night somewhere north of the campus. That being the case, he would have more than doubled the length of his drive by going to his place first, and risked being late as well. Hilshire was never late for an appointment, much less one with Director Draghi.

Seated in the closed car beside him, she'd thought she caught a faint trace of scent clinging to him, very different from his aftershave. Besides, he obviously hadn't shaved this morning. He'd glanced at her and rolled down his window as he'd started the car. "Need some fresh air to keep me awake."

Via Flaminia was a modern expressway at the city limits, but, as they'd moved towards the oldest part of the city, it had become narrow and crowded, both with automobiles – parked and moving – and pedestrians. The buildings loomed over the sidewalks, five- to seven-story structures in a hodgepodge of styles and periods. The pedestrians, who crossed the street everywhere but at the corners, came in a variety of skin colors and clothing styles, as if they'd come from all over the world. The street had teemed with life and confusion at that early hour, almost overwhelming her. She would never have guessed her handler would have chosen to live in a neighborhood so disorderly.

She'd eyed the angle parking on both sides of the street, every space of which had been occupied, and wondered how many blocks they might have to walk. But Hilshire had abruptly slowed in front of a large building, and turned off the street into a narrow opening in its façade. "Here."

The apartment building's floor plan adopted a convention common to residences in Rome since the time of the Empire: it was a hollow rectangle surrounding an open space in its center that let light and air into every apartment without a street view. But this space, instead of being a garden or courtyard, had been paved for parking. Hilshire had wheeled into an empty spot with a number painted on the pavement. _This seems more like the Hilshire I know_, she'd thought as she'd gotten out, looking around at the neat rows of pricey cars and the windows of the apartments isolated from the hustle and bustle on the street. "Hilshire. What made you pick this place?"

"It's convenient," he'd said as he locked the car. "There are a number of government offices nearby. Also parks and museums and restaurants and theaters."

_Those don't sound like places you'd go alone_, she'd thought. She'd pondered how she felt about that as they'd ridden the elevator to the top floor.

At the apartment's door, Hilshire had unlocked and gestured her inside. She'd stepped in, and been surprised enough to say, "I thought you guys got paid."

"Very funny. You wouldn't believe the price of rents here."

The apartment had appeared to consist of a combined living area and kitchen, with two closed doors off a sitting area no larger than his dorm room. "What are those?"

"Bathroom and bedroom. Excuse me, I need to make myself presentable. Make yourself at home." He'd disappeared behind one of the doors.

The small apartment's furnishings had been less fancy than she'd expected, though certainly more luxurious than his dorm room, and palatial compared to hers: the kitchen was fully equipped, and the living area had a comfortable-looking couch and a thick rug on the floor in front of it. The flatscreen television on the wall was smaller than she would have expected – she'd been told that men Hilshire's age were mad about having the largest screen possible, and she was sure her handler could have afforded as large a one as he wanted – though from a name brand known for quality. And the bathroom was a few steps away and private, not forty meters down the hall, with someone knocking on the door the instant you put your foot in the tub. Still, she'd thought, it wasn't a place you'd take a woman you wanted to impress.

She'd explored the little galley kitchen, opening his cupboards and refrigerator. She'd poured a glass of juice, but had left it on the counter after a sip; she didn't know whether it would be proper to carry it through his living room. She'd dropped into his couch, sinking into the cushions. At least what little he owned was quality stuff, she thought.

Hilshire had reappeared without jacket or tie, collar open, a folded bundle of clothing on his arm. "I'm about to take a shower," he'd said unnecessarily. "I won't be long." He'd disappeared behind the other door. Soon she'd heard the shower turn on, and she could feel warm humid air wafting under the door. He must like it hot, she'd thought. Or he had something stubborn to get off.

Triela had stayed on the couch, ignoring the TV remote. Instead, she'd kept her head turned toward the two doors, listening to the water run, watching the knob on Hilshire's bedroom door get bigger and bigger.

She wasn't really snooping, she'd told herself as she stood. She wasn't about to search his drawers or anything. But this place was so austere; she wanted to see if he did better for himself in his most private of rooms. She wouldn't even set foot in it, just stick her head in and look around.

She'd grasped the knob, turned it, and eased the door open.

Hilshire's bedroom was about the size of the sitting area, with one elaborately curtained window whose heavy cloth panels had been drawn back, letting light pass through the gauzy ones beneath. The furniture consisted of a bed, mirrored dresser, and armoire. More rugs lay on the wood floor. Everything was neat and _in ordnung_: he'd emptied his pockets into a divided tray on the dresser, separating coins from keys and such. The hairbrush and bottle of aftershave next to it hadn't been lined up like soldiers, quite, but she wouldn't have been surprised, had she lifted them, to find worn spots in the dresser's finish underneath. Hilshire was just that kind of guy.

But she'd been able to spare only a moment for the dresser before her whole attention had been drawn to Hilshire's bed. It was magnificent, three times the size of his cot – and her bunk – at the Agency, and seemed to have a mattress half a meter thick, covered with a deep red spread. The foot- and headboards were massive and elaborate, with tall posts at each corner, and were made of brass as shiny as a fresh shell casing. Hilshire's holstered pistol hung from one of the headboard posts. Big fluffy pillows in an accent color lined the head.

She'd swallowed. The place her handler laid his head at night was beautiful and unexpected, and made her comfortable little bunk at the Agency seem narrow and mean, a child's bed. The thick mattress and fluffy pillows and the footboard's graceful curves had called to her hands. _When will you ever get another chance?_ A little voice in her head had whispered. She'd found herself a step inside the bedroom door, resolution forgotten, when she'd heard the water shut off.

She'd backed out of the room and eased the door shut, turning the knob to prevent the latch from _snick_ing as it seated in the recess. She'd returned to the couch. Several breaths later, the little voice spoke up again. _Stupid. He won't come out until he's dry and dressed. You had plenty of time. And maybe … you still do?_

She'd kept her rear end planted in the cushion, miffed at her own cowardice, and waited for Hilshire to come out.

At least there'd been no trace of perfume in the bedroom.

A man bearing an armload of ring binders passed into the squadroom from the door next to her, breaking her reverie. As he dumped them on a nearby desk, he said quietly to the man seated there, "I see the puppet princess is back."

"The German's been in the Chief's office for half an hour," the man at the desk said without looking up at his visitor. "Something about an upcoming operation. I think Draghi just wants to make sure Section Two doesn't get in our way." He gave her a quick glance. "Creepy. It wouldn't be so bad if it'd blink or shift its feet once in a while."

_Why would anyone shift their feet if they don't get tired from standing? _She thought. _And I do so blink, just not as often as someone who has to close their eyes ten times a minute just to keep them moist.__Those hardly seem like reasons to feel superior._

A third man now hovered over the desk, a paper cup in his hand. "Do you suppose they all look like that?"

"No," the man sitting at the desk said. "Some of them look even younger, like little girls."

"Maybe they pick them out of a catalog," the man with the cup suggested. "Custom orders, mix and match. This face, that hair, those legs."

"Heh." The man who'd brought the binders gave her another sidelong look. "Easy enough to see what he had in mind when he put _this_ one together."

"You're a sick man, Alonzo," the man at the desk said as he opened the first of the binders, plainly trying to exit the conversation.

"_I'm_ sick?" The man's voice rose slightly, enough for the people at several nearby desks to hear, though still not loud enough for someone by the door. "I'm not the one with a little blonde blowup doll following two steps behind me all the time. Bet she comes in handy at home when he's pushing up the sheets."

Several closed-lip smiles followed this remark. Triela understood that the man was being crude and sexual, just from his expressions and tone. It mildly disgusted her, just on principle. But his choice of words puzzled her. _Pushing up the sheets? How…_

Her mind went back to Hilshire's bed. Only now, her mental image placed him in it, covered only by a sheet, with nothing on underneath, as if waiting for a woman. She got it then, and felt her ears catch fire.

The man with the coffee glanced her way, and his eyes widened. "Mother of God." The one with the clever imagination, Alonzo, turned her way. She locked eyes with him, and his face reddened to match her own.

"Thank you for the heads-up," Hilshire said as he came into the room with Director Draghi, passing the rows of desks with their silent occupants. "I think we may be able to work together on this one, even if it's only sharing information."

"Don't be too optimistic about that," Draghi said. "Your people like to keep secrets." They were now about halfway through the room. Draghi noticed the tension all around and frowned.

"Cooperation problems aren't unique to our two Sections, Director. Sometimes -" Hilshire noticed a moment later. His instant reaction was to seek her out. He stepped quickly to her, and his brow furrowed as he noted her condition. "Triela?"

Draghi, a step behind him, scowled. "What's wrong with your cyborg? A fever?"

Triela was tall for her age, but she still only came up to Hilshire's chin when they stood together. Draghi was half a head taller still. She had to tilt her chin far up to meet his eyes, but she did. "No," she said, putting the back of her hand to her hot cheek and glaring up at him. "Your men are pigs."

Hilshire put a shoulder between them, about to push his way between, but Draghi turned away to survey the silent room. Some of the agents wouldn't meet his eyes; others stared back blank-faced with shock. Several of them were flushed now.

Draghi turned back, his face unreadable. "My sincere apologies," he said – to Hilshire, not to her. "A private room will be cleared for your use the next time you come."

"That won't be necessary," Hilshire said, voice level. "The next time I come, she won't be with me."

Alone together in the elevator, he said to her, "Is it always like that? Why didn't you tell me?"

"Today was the worst," she said. "You're really going to leave me behind?"

He straightened his tie and stared at the closed doors. She thought he looked very handsome when he was angry – at someone else. "There are cafes and restaurants all around here. I'm sure I can leave you at a table till I come back. Or you can wait for me at my place. It's not far, after all."

-0-

In the Section One squadroom, Tomasso Draghi swiveled his head like a gun turret, taking in everyone in the room. Men who'd coolly traded fire with Republican fanatics and Camorra soldiers cringed under his gaze. He said, too mildly, "And what part of the word 'enhanced' did you not understand?" He shook his head. "I've just taken off my hat for one of those undertakers from Section Two. And in an hour, Lorenzo's going to hear that I don't know what my men are doing when my back is turned." He looked them over again. "I want a full report. I don't want names. But I want to know exactly what was said in every conversation in this room when the cyborg turned pink." He focused on the new man, Alonzo Gheiri, a transfer from Public Safety and his sister-in-law's son from a previous marriage. "_Exactly._"

Back in his office, he pondered the little event. Apparently, S2's puppets still had feelings. That surprised him, as he was sure it had surprised the moron with the big mouth. And it made him a little sad. How cruel of Lorenzo, to give them such a life without removing their sensibilities.

Unlike his men, the Director of Section One knew how the cyborgs were made. Draghi had attended many of the meetings where Lorenzo had pushed his proposals and rationalized his methods. To the money holders, Lorenzo had explained that the 'test subjects' were damaged young people with no possibility of recovery by any other means, that the prosthetics and cybernetic implants and 'conditioning' were their only chance for a productive life instead of decades spent waiting to die as wards of the State; that the opportunity to fully test the new technologies would enable the medical community to provide mainstream patients with reliable equipment and therapies much sooner, at lower cost. Finally, that the research would keep Italy firmly in the lead in a vital field of technical and scientific endeavor.

To the men of influence, however, he'd presented a different case. He'd described the 'enhancements' that would be built into their little guinea pigs, and the uses to which such abilities might be put. He'd spoken of the 'conditioning' process which enabled the cyborgs to accept and make full use of their improvements as well as making them into fearless and loyal servants. Finally, he'd explained the murky chain of legal loopholes that enabled the government to treat minor children as property without being fully responsible for their actions.

Lorenzo hadn't mentioned to either group that the drugs used in the 'conditioning' process were caustic and experimental, that they worked in rather the same manner as chemotherapy drugs: by burning down the barn to drive out the mice. And he never mentioned that the cyborgs' unswerving loyalty would be, not to the State, but to the Agency and their handlers.

Draghi wasn't a cold man, though he could be a pragmatic one. He might bend the occasional rule, but he still held close the ideals that had led him decades ago into public service. He'd acquired, with considerable effort, the files on some of Section Two's 'girls', to see what Lorenzo was playing with. Even now, reading through them made his jaw muscles clench, because in each of those tragic backstories he saw policemen and other public servants who hadn't done their jobs.

But that wrong wasn't made right by giving over what was left of these kids to doctors with elastic ethics, men who turned them into man-killing robots driven by organic computers. He pitied the children they'd been, but the cyborgs were abominations. And not all the monsters at Section Two were cyborgs.


	6. Gratitude

TEN

Lauro was back in Siena, and on the hunt. His target this time was a police captain and the chief's right-hand man in criminal enterprise, a certain Alberto Alighieri. The man had family who was Family, so to speak, and was the one who arranged for the disappearances of confiscated arms from the evidence lockers, the 'clerical errors' on the legitimate arms deliveries, and the network of hiding places and meeting rooms that the Five Republics Faction depended on here. Unlike the police chief, who basically got paid to turn his head, Alighieri was a man who knew things the Agency would like to. Lauro intended to visit the man in the privacy of his home, and ask him a few – more than a few, actually – questions about his operation. Afterwards, if Captain Alighieri was still in good enough shape to present at a police station, Lauro would take him in and say he fell down the stairs. Otherwise, he'd have Elsa put two in his head before they left.

At one A.M., Lauro brought the Land Rover to a stop in the shadow of a three-story building within sight of Alighieri's corner apartment on the top floor. He could see a light on in one of the two windows. He brought his binoculars to his eyes and studied them, but saw no motion. The lit window flickered faintly, as if a television was on in the room.

Lauro had sniffed around, and connected with someone who was familiar with Alighieri's habits. The good captain was almost always home on Thursday nights after work. He was single, and, except for the occasional prostitute or one-nighter picked up in a bar, didn't entertain at his place. "Elsa. Go peek in a window, see if you can spot him. Find out if he's alone."

Elsa looked up through the windshield at the building's row of third-story windows, under which ran a ledge perhaps thirty centimeters wide. "Right." She got out and moved through the shadows toward the building.

Lauro sat in the dark thinking as he waited for her to come back. He needed to change his approach with the handlers, he decided; the get-em-drunk-and chatty ploy just wasn't getting anywhere. The ones he'd approached seemed reserved and suspicious. Maybe it was because the invitation was coming from nowhere; it wasn't like he was in the habit of hanging out with all his Section Two buddies, now, was it? He needed a legitimate excuse to meet with Jose Croce, something work-related, since that was all they shared, but casual enough to allow them to meet at a bar. He'd have to think about that one. It wouldn't do to give anyone from Section Two too close a look at how he was running his operation.

The hit on the police chief. That was it. He'd already been looking over possible sites, and had just about settled on taking the old bastard on the steps of his own headquarters; _that_ would send a message, and might make his work in the other small towns hereabout a little easier. A second sniper really would be handy, if not strictly necessary; it would show he wasn't working alone, but had an organization behind him. And it would be a perfect excuse to meet Jose somewhere private to mix business and pleasure. He'd have to be careful not to seem too chummy, though; he and Jose Croce were unlikely friends, and the other man would be sure to suspect -

The window next to him burst inward and a blow to the side of his head sent him into the passenger seat. _Not a bullet, I'd be dead._

"I might have guessed," said a man's voice through the shattered window. A pistol was poking through. Lauro brought his hand to the side of his head, and it came away red, but it was just a cut. He realized he'd been struck by the end of the gun barrel. "Lauro de Sica, you piece of shit. Did you really think it'd be that easy to find someone who'd rat me out?" The barrel wiggled. "Your gun."

Lauro sat up and carefully reached under his jacket. He brought out his SIG 226, holding it by the frame.

"Toss it in the back seat," Alighieri said. After Lauro complied, the man said, "Now your holdout gun. I'm sure you've got one."

Lauro bent and lifted his pants cuff, and the Mosquito in his ankle holster joined the pistol from his jacket.

"Out of the car. Slowly." Alighieri backed a step.

Lauro considered jumping him as he got out, but didn't think much of his chances. As he opened the door to get out, he stole a glance over Alighieri's shoulder at the ledge under the apartment windows, but Elsa wasn't in sight. Then a flash brightened the illuminated window, too bright to have come from the TV. Then another. _Kill shot._

The crooked cop's gun wiggled again; some part of Lauro's mind noted that Alighieri was left-handed. "On your knees. Lace your fingers behind your head."

He dropped to his knees. A grunt escaped him as the shock traveled from the pavement up his thighs to his injured back, stiffened from long sitting. Broken glass from his hair and clothes pattered to the pavement, some of it painted with blood from the side of his head. His neck and head were already beginning to throb. _Not for long_, he thought.

"Where are the others?"

"Others?"

"Don't give me that. I saw the slaughter at the safehouse. That wasn't one man's work. You had a team. You may be working alone tonight, but I bet the others are holed up somewhere close while you scout the next target." The barrel of Alighieri's gun stopped a thumb's width from Lauro's right eye. "Tell me where to find them, and I'll make it quick for you."

Lauro looked up at the flat-eyed man. "You kill me, and the rest of my team will find _you_, Berto." His statement was pure bravado. He was sure that, as soon as Elsa found her handler dead – if she hadn't been the one on the receiving end of those silenced shots in the apartment - she'd go catatonic, just switch off, like Raballo's puppet had. Then again, once the Agency found out, he was sure neither Section would rest until Alighieri's head was on a pike.

"Unless I find them first. Which I will. This is my town, they can't hide long from me." The gun moved back to Lauro's right eye. "You should have stayed under your rock, de Sica. Taken the money and dropped out of sight. Now -"

Alighieri grunted and lurched sideways, eyes widening in surprise. His gun swung away and up, and Lauro saw the small arm between Alighieri's side and forearm, pushing it aside, and the gloved hand on the grip over his fingers, two fingers behind the trigger safing the weapon. Lauro could hear Alberto's fingers crack as the gun was twisted from his grip and flung away, louder than his cry of pain. Then the crooked cop's empty gun hand was behind his back, and Lauro heard another crack as the elbow broke. With a choking noise, the man was driven to his knees face-to-face with his intended victim. Elsa stood behind the crooked cop, face savage, teeth bared, Berto's ruined wrist and elbow gripped tight in her hands. Berto and Lauro stared into each other's eyes just long enough for Lauro to see the disbelief on Alighieri's face before the cyborg let go and placed a gloved hand on the man's forehead and a forearm at the back of his neck. She pulled hard, snapping Alberto's head back impossibly far – Lauro heard the _crunch _- before releasing it. Alighieri's head fell on his shoulder and he toppled forward into Lauro's arms.

Elsa swept the corpse aside one-handed, and it smacked limply into the pavement. As if some switch inside her had been pulled, her manner changed from ferocity to panic. "_Lauro_," she said, voice shrill. "Are you all right? _Say_ something." She reached for him.

Fear rose up in him greater than anything he'd felt with the crooked cop's gun in his face. Her eyes were big as hand-mirrors, and shining as if with their own light. And what he saw in them…. He brushed her hands aside just before she touched him and struggled, shaking, to his feet. "Where the hell were you? How'd you let him get past you?" He knew he was being completely unfair; Alighieri had been waiting for him, and even if the crooked cop had been in his apartment when they'd rolled up, there must be half a dozen exits. But he had to wipe that _look_ off her face. _You're not mine. And I'm sure as hell not yours._ "I almost got killed just now."

She straightened and tucked her elbows back to her sides. "I'm sorry. There was an ambush inside the apartment."

That was when he noticed that one of her braids had come loose, releasing a sprawl of blonde hair on the shoulder of her coat. His hand moved an inch toward her to brush it back before he realized. He turned stiffly away to glare at the body. "I wanted answers from this man."

"I'm sorry," she said again. "I…"

"Never mind." He took a knee and started to go through Alighieri's pockets. The bent cop was lying on his side, so Lauro had to roll him over to get at all of them. When he did, Alighieri's head flopped sickeningly, and the wide, staring eyes seemed to follow him. Lauro dismissed that as imagination, until the eyes blinked. "He's still alive!"

"Only for another minute," she said.

Alighieri's mouth worked, but only tiny lip and tongue sounds came out: he couldn't draw a breath to speak. Or scream, if that was what he was trying for. Lauro hurried through the job, finding nothing of importance, and stood. He turned for the Rover.

Behind him, Elsa said, "Do you want pictures? I already took some inside the building."

"Yeah." He opened the car door and brushed the broken glass off the seats. "Hurry up." He fetched his weapons from the back. Then he got in the car and stared at the windshield until she got in beside him. In the glass's reflection, he could see her sitting primly in the seat, eyes downcast.

_You're not my partner. You're not my little pal. You're just a talking dog, one that can tear a man's arm off. And you don't really care about me, any more than I care about you. You're just following your training. Your programming._

_I don't owe you my life. I don't owe you anything._

He started the car. "Let's get out of here."


	7. Looking to the Future

NINE

In the big indoor shooting range, Angelica thumbed ten more rounds of nine-millimeter into the empty magazine of her Steyr and stole a glance at Marco as she seated it into the grip; he was leaning against the dividing wall behind her, arms crossed, not even looking her way. Even though she was having a bad day, he hadn't offered a word of correction or criticism. He didn't seem to care if she hit the target or not. It was worse than being yelled at.

She stood facing downrange with her feet at shoulder width, gripped her pistol with two hands in a stiff-armed stance, and fired. Before the spot appeared on the target, she knew it was a bad shot, and she was right: the bullet had struck entirely outside the target rings.

She heard Marco sigh; so he'd been watching after all. But he still didn't speak.

She wanted to please Marco more than anything in the world, but she was clumsy and stupid and forgot things all the time. She knew that she and Marco had been a fratello for a long while, but her memories of their time together before the last surgery were kind of fuzzy and chopped up. She wished she could remember those times better. Something told her they'd been happier. She'd bet that Marco hadn't been like a simmering pot ready to boil over all the time the way he was now. The doctors had told her that her memory loss was the result of her surgeries, but she didn't believe it anymore. She must have done something really stupid, she thought, messed up really bad, for them to think it best to erase her and start over. That was why Marco was angry with her all the time.

_I just have to try harder_, she thought. She concentrated on the target and squeezed off a round. A white spot appeared in the center of the target's head: an impressive shot, if she hadn't been aiming for the bull's-eye in the center of the chest.

Marco turned his head away and looked at the blank back wall.

"Marco?"

"What?" He didn't turn.

"When do you think I can go back to work?"

"Don't even think about it yet. If I let you back in the field now, you'd get us both killed."

_It must have been something __stupendously__ bad_, she thought. She looked down at her sweatpants, torn at one knee and grass-stained from her morning run. Marco had her run around the campus at least a couple of times a day. He didn't run with her, of course; he couldn't have kept up for twenty meters, and the Agency's perimeter was twenty kilometers around. But he was always waiting for her at the starting point when she got back.

This morning, she'd arrived from her first lap with dirt and grass ground into her palms and knees. "What were you doing?" He'd asked as he pulled a dead leaf from her hair and dropped it to the ground.

"There were holes in the path."

"And your feet found every one?" He frowned down at her. "It's the same path as yesterday."

"You said I needed to improve my time. I… guess I was pushing too hard."

He'd looked again at her clothes and hands. "How many times?"

"I …"

"How many times?"

"Three or four." She'd added miserably, "I think."

His jaw had tightened. "Run it again."

Angelica put it out of her mind and lined up for another shot. She paused when she heard the door to the firing range open. She heard the man's footsteps just before he called out. "Hey. Marco."

"Lauro," her handler acknowledged. "Where's Elsa?"

"I don't know. Around somewhere," the other handler said. "A class or something, I suppose. You know, you said you'd get back to me."

Marco was still leaning against the wall with folded arms. "Sorry. I've been busy."

Lauro glanced at her, and she lowered her eyes. "Busy. You haven't been out in the field in months, unless you count odd jobs working backup. I just thought it'd be cool to get together after working hours and knock back a few, that's all. But if you don't want to, just say so."

"Okay then," Marco said. "I don't drink. Thanks anyway."

Lauro scowled before his attention shifted to her target. He studied it a moment and said, "You know, I had this car once, a Trabant. Something new went wrong with it every week. I'd take it in to a mechanic, it'd come back worse. I finally junked it and got a Fiat. Best move I ever made." He turned and headed back to the entrance.

Angelica watched the door slide closed. "I don't like him." It just slipped out, thinking out loud. She almost brought a hand to her mouth, shocked that she'd say anything against one of Marco's friends.

Marco was staring at the door as well. "I don't either." A pause. "Sometimes I wonder if that's because we're too much alike."

She felt a little thrill of fear she couldn't explain. "Marco. Let me work. Please. I'll do better, I promise."

He was silent, still staring at the doors. She thought maybe he hadn't heard her, but she didn't have the courage to repeat her request.

Finally, he let out a long breath. "No," he said. Her heart sank until he went on, "But if your shooting improves, maybe you can do some live-fires in the training room with the other girls in a week or two. If you do well with that… we'll see." He turned to her finally. "How many rounds in your gun?"

"Eight," she said firmly.

His eyes bored into hers. "Are you sure?"

Suddenly she wasn't sure. But she didn't have a better answer. "Yes."

"Correct." He nodded towards her target. "Empty it. Then we'll hit the garden path."

"Okay. I'll be faster this time. And I won't fall down."

He turned to observe the target. "I said 'we'. I feel like a walk."

She put five of her eight bullets into the target rings.

SIX

"Not bad." Jean pressed the 'stop' button on his watch, freezing the display of the built-in stopwatch. "You just broke the course record by a full sixteen seconds."

Rico let go of the gently swinging rope that marked the end of the obstacle course and dropped three feet to the ground in front of her handler. She debated whether to risk a smile and a 'thank you,' and decided against. Jean preferred her quiet, controlled, and unemotional in his presence. A cyborg handler whose answer to every behavioral tic was 'more conditioning' needed to be treated carefully. Rico liked her brains just the way they were, thank you. They were almost the only part of her that had ever worked properly, and about the only original equipment she had left.

Jean was looking her over carefully; she stared back with a placid expression, waiting for him to arrive at whatever decision he was weighing. Finally, he spoke. "Don't you want to know whose record you broke? It's stood for quite a while."

It hadn't occurred to her, but, now that Jean mentioned it …. "Triela?"

"Claes. From before we lost Captain Raballo."

She blinked. Sometimes it was hard to remember that the bookish girl who shared Triela's room had once been just like the rest of them, with interests other than gardening and music and painting and the printed word. "Oh."

"I think some training in parkour would be profitable. Once you learn the moves, it should be easy for you."

"Par-koor?" To Rico, it sounded like some weird martial-arts training, but she didn't want to ask, in case Jean thought she should already know. She'd ask Claes later; Claes knew everything.

But Jean nodded slightly. "A kind of specialized obstacle-course discipline, especially suited to urban environments. Once you've mastered it, obstructions that would stop a human being cold will scarcely exist for you." He turned away, towards the administration building. "Lots of climbing and running and jumping. You'll like it." He turned back, giving Rico barely enough time to wipe the grin off her face. "Take the rest of the day off. Go play or something. But get your rest tonight. I'll be meeting you at breakfast. We have a job in Campania tomorrow."

This time, she risked a tiny smile. "Right."

-0-

Piero Lorenzo stood behind his wide desk, gazing out the window and wondering what the hell his dog was barking about.

The office he stood in was one of three set up around the sprawling Agency grounds for his use. Depending on his agenda, he might spend his day in the large and fancy 'public' office adjoining the hospital, the rather more utilitarian one in the main building near cyborg country, or this one, a ground-floor retreat near the training ground at the back of the estate. He intended to spend the day speaking with the handlers and support staff for the cyborg program, and he felt this was the best location from which to do it without interfering with their routine.

At most government agencies, reserving three large offices for one official, even a chief, would seem a scandalous perk and a huge waste of resources. But Lorenzo could have established ten offices without putting anyone else out. The semi-public sections of the Agency were a-bustle with people, but here, on the other side of the ravine, the spaces were quiet and the buildings largely empty. Lorenzo had chosen this facility with expansion in mind; though the cyborg program presently consisted of only a handful of 'girls', the classrooms, dormitories, and training areas could easily accommodate ten or twenty times as many.

He remembered that it had been Bianchi's suggestion to house the cyborgs in shared rooms, even though there were plenty for all. The doctor had said that all the vacant space in their environment – the near-empty classrooms, the wide-open firing ranges and training areas, the corridors lined with doors closing off unused rooms – would contribute to their sense of isolation, promoting emotional instability. Having the girls buddy up would go a long way toward eliminating the problem. If the program expanded enough, then giving them rooms of their own would be reasonable and safe, but until then, it would be best to pack them into a single section of the dorm and keep them close together.

He remembered when Elsa had arrived at the dormitory, and Ferro had made ready to put her in with Angelica. Lauro had balked and demanded a separate room for her, and Lorenzo, still hoping de Sica would be a bridge between the two Sections, had accommodated him. He'd initially thought the handler was coddling his new 'girl', but now Lorenzo wasn't so sure.

Lorenzo's dog, out of sight around the building, yawped excitedly once again. The reason for all the racket became clear when the big mutt rounded the corner at a run with Jean's cyborg in hot pursuit. The two stopped, circled, feinted, and dodged, the dog whuffing and the kid grinning and giggling as they faced off, then took off again, disappearing around the opposite building.

The Director felt his cheeks stretching in a smile. When you saw one of them like this, you could feel good about what you'd done to make it happen, and what you were still doing to prove the project's worth and bring more of them into the program. And thousands had benefited from the research data developed from these children; they had, unknowingly, probably saved more lives as guinea pigs than they'd taken as assassins.

The Director's left heel bobbed, almost a nervous stamp. It had been doing that a lot lately; the doctors had warned him that stress would accelerate the progress of his disease, and he'd been juggling a great many problems lately. It couldn't be helped. Draghi had been lobbying hard to reduce Section Two's authority and increase its oversight. Lorenzo was sure the Section One chief would have liked to attack Section Two's funding as well – the money gap between Sections was wide, and it must rankle Draghi that the 'puppeteers' were paid far better than his people – but Section Two, despite huge capital outlays and princely wage schedules, actually turned a profit for the Agency. That would change if the pace of research slowed, as it was bound to do if the cyborgs were taken out of the field and confined to lab testing, as Draghi wished. That would also greatly reduce Section Two's usefulness to certain people and erode its support. If Lorenzo couldn't stay on top of the threats to his little satrapy, the cyborg program would be reduced to a neglected little research project, hamstrung by the bureaucracy and begging at the Treasury door with a hundred others. His leg twitched again at the thought.

Little Rico reappeared, pelting across Lorenzo's field of view, face alight with simple joy. The dog flew by right on her heels, and the pair disappeared once more. He could hear the dog's barking fade as they raced across the compound.

Lorenzo recalled the pitiful little creature Jean had met at the entrance to the Agency's hospital, signing for her as if she was a package. She'd rolled in on her hospital bed, tubes and wires festooned about her misshapen form, medical techs pushing the wheeled equipment modules alongside as her bed was rolled down the hall. Lorenzo would never forget the horrid sound of her breathing. Surely no one would argue that her former life was superior to the present one; even as Jean and the Agency's tool, she had more freedom, and more choices, now.

The cyborg program _must_ continue, he resolved once again. More than that, it must expand, exploring every avenue of discovery, saving lives and making the world a better place. Such a production line of medical miracles was worth any price. _And who knows_, he thought, with a tiny quirk at the corner of his mouth, _if the research moves quickly enough, they may even find a way to save me._

FIVE

The Camorra soldier's pistol fell from his hand and clattered to the cobbles. Rico let go of his gun arm and his head, which was now kind of squishy, and he slid down the alley wall to his knees, leaving the bricks smeared with blood and scraps of face. He fell over on his side, joining the other gunman, equally dead. The second man's shirt looked kind of like it had a target painted on it near the center of his chest from Triela's contact shot, a neat hole ringed with powder burn. She studied them vacantly, feeling that strange detachment settle over her again like a cold blanket. Conditioning, she supposed; all the girls had noticed the same feeling – or lack of it, rather, when they killed someone. It made her feel disconnected from what she was doing, as if she was reading about it in a story. When she tried to think about it, her mind would sort of slide off it and settle on something else. She glanced down at her clothes, very glad she'd packed a change; Jean had mentioned stopping to eat later, and she couldn't be seen in public like this. Killing people could be so messy when you weren't doing it looking through a scope.

Jean stood a few steps away, gun drawn, but he hadn't had a chance to shoot. Triela wiped her pistol on her victim's shirt and holstered it, her expression blank. Hilshire said, "Triela. Go keep watch at the mouth of the alley. We don't want to be disturbed." She nodded absently and moved off. A third criminal, a business-suit type, was sitting on the pavers with his back jammed against the wall and his knees drawn up, heels scrabbling, staring at Triela wide-eyed as she passed by.

Jean caught Rico's eye and tilted his head towards the man. "Talk to him."

She gave the poor man a little smile as she stepped close. He didn't seem reassured; they never did. Rico didn't like people being afraid of her, but she supposed it was only natural to be afraid of someone who'd just been ordered to beat you to death.

Grownups were so funny about death, she mused as she started work. Sometimes it was a big deal and sometimes it wasn't. It depended on so many things: who it was, whether they knew them well, whether the cause was accident or murder or illness. It all seemed so silly. No matter how it came to you, death was death, the same for everybody. Before she came to the Agency, death had been close by for as long as she could remember, and sometimes it had even seemed kind of friendly. She'd pushed it away, not out of fear, but because life or death was the only choice she had left, and death seemed so final. She wasn't ready to see what lay behind that curtain.

"Rico," Jean said. "Stop."

She stepped back and wiped her knuckles on her jeans. The man folded up, coughing and moaning faintly. The whole operation had been very quiet so far. Rico and Triela had taken the three men completely by surprise as they'd come out the back entrance of the trattoria; Triela had fired the only shot, ramming her P230 hard into the biggest guard's sternum and blowing up his heart with no more than a muffled _whump_. And what Rico had done to this man had hurt plenty, but it had also left him unable to cry out. With Triela keeping casual witnesses out of the alley, she and Jean should be able to do what they'd come for and clear the area before the cleanup crew came for the bodies.

Jean stood over their last victim. "Anything to say, while you can still talk?"

The man coughed again, and blood spotted his tie. "Love of God, what do you want from me? I just sell insurance."

Jean deliberately studied the corpses of the two bodyguards who gave lie to the man's protest. "I'm interested in insurance, at least the kind you sell. I'm especially interested in who underwrites your 'policies', and who buys them. You must know a great many people I'd like to meet." Jean took a knee next to him and bent close. "We don't need to do this here. We can take you someplace where we can take all the time we want. Don't think you can hold out. Omerta doesn't mean much when someone's grinding your broken bone ends together."

"After I tell you what you want, then you'll shoot me."

"That's one option, especially if you make us rough you up too much to present to the police."

"Here's another." Hilshire looked down the alley at Triela, who stood with her back to them, watching the street. He leaned close, and spoke so low that Rico could barely hear. "The bunny with the bloody pistol and the dead eyes. What do you suppose would happen if I told her that you once arranged for her shipment to Amsterdam?"

FOUR

Tomasso Draghi was a worried man. He accepted the envelope and dismissed the agent who'd met with Lauro de Sica at the regular meeting place, a small backstreet bar just north of Vatican City. Lauro had let slip to his fellow agent that he'd recently brought Hilshire to the same place. That was sloppy, and it made Draghi wonder if de Sica was starting to mix up friend and foe.

He opened the envelope and examined the photographs of the cyborg's latest handiwork in Siena: the carnage at the Padania safehouse and at Captain Alighieri's apartment. What he saw in those pictures looked like the work of some African paramilitary group, not government agents, and certainly not one little girl. Draghi's teeth clenched at the mental image of one of Section Two's blank-eyed little puppets stalking through those rooms, killing everything in sight.

Ignoring the blood everywhere, he studied the tumbled figures lying on the floor or stretched across the furniture as if thrown there. Judging from the weapons lying about, they hadn't all been taken by surprise; at Alighieri's, in fact, according to Lauro, they'd been lying in wait. It hadn't made any difference. Lauro's report had stated that 'Elsa' had returned to him both times without even a scratch. Draghi nodded. It was easy to see the attraction in using these puppets to do the government's dirty work; they were damned good at it. He studied the twisted head and horror-stricken face of Alighieri's corpse in the alley, and the fingers of its left hand all askew, and wondered if the cyborgs were programmed to enjoy their work.

He stuffed the pictures back in the envelope, labeled it, and put it in with the others in his file drawer, locked away until they might be of use. He knew better than to show them to anyone now; Section Two was still in good odor at the front office, and evidence of how ruthlessly Lorenzo's group prosecuted its directives wouldn't change anyone's opinion. But if Monica Petris's support of Lorenzo ever wavered for some reason, these photos might provide her with an excuse to terminate the cyborg program.

Draghi wondered if Lauro's investigation into 'improprieties' between the cyborgs and their handlers would bear fruit. Judging by Hilshire's reaction in the squadroom, the pretty little monster was considerably more than a two-legged hunting dog to him. Draghi doubted their relationship was a fully intimate one, but it wouldn't need to be. Appearances mattered more than what one could prove in such cases. And Hilshire's protectiveness towards her could easily be mistaken for that of a jealous lover. Proof, or even strong evidence, might just be the tool Draghi needed to pry Monica and Lorenzo apart. Monica Petris was a cool and pragmatic woman, but she was a woman, just the same; she might accept the use of brainwashed girl-children as killing machines to further the government's agenda, but she'd never stand for Section Two's men using them for sexual playthings.

Expedience was the second evil of Section Two. The cyborgs made it too easy to believe that the stickiest problems could be solved with a few bullets. But Draghi knew how difficult it was to serve the law by breaking it. And he knew, as any student of history should know, that ideas are far harder to kill than men. Besides, this was Italy, one of the oldest civilizations on the planet, not some third-world dictatorship that sent death squads to collect people in the quiet hours of the night, people condemned on the strength of an informant's whisper. But that was what things would come to, if Lorenzo's program was allowed to prosper. A government which sought political stability through assassination would never run out of enemies to kill.


	8. Feelings, True and Otherwise

THREE

It was a three-and-a-half hour drive from the Agency to Siena. Their route consisted mostly of two-lane crown roads that got increasingly twisty as they traveled north into Tuscany. Lauro, like most Italian drivers, paid little attention to the posted limits; the Rover's high center of gravity set his top speed on the winding, shoulder-leaning pavement, a rate Jose's little red Porsche matched with ease as it followed close behind.

With nothing to command Lauro's attention on the nearly-empty road ahead, he watched Jose and Henrietta in his rearview. He saw the little cyborg bobbing in her seat, making cow eyes at Jose as they talked. And Jose was eating it all up, too. How pathetic was that, that a man could enjoy the adoration of a machine programmed to do his bidding? It was like watching a man talk to a doll.

He glanced at his passenger, and saw that Elsa was using the side view mirror to watch the other team as well. He returned his attention to the road ahead for a few minutes before looking behind him again.

"Lauro." Elsa's voice cracked - from disuse, he supposed: it was the first time she'd spoken since they'd gotten in the car. Nothing unusual about that. Surprising she'd spoken at all, actually. He grunted an acknowledgement, eyes on the red car in the rearview.

She went on, seeming to struggle with the words, "I… I want you to know…"

The car behind them was forgotten. _Don't say something stupid, Elsa_, he thought at her_._

"That I …" She seemed as alarmed by what was working its way out of her mouth as he.

_Don't say it. Don't make me have a talk with Jean when we get back._

"… I'll do my best." Clearly not what she'd first intended to say; perhaps cyborgs had a survival instinct after all.

"Good," he said, relieved. Without looking at her, he turned up the radio above conversation level, putting an end to any more talk.

So close to the holidays, it should have been impossible to find last-minute accommodations in a tourist town like Siena, but Draghi, motivated by the police chief's threat to expose the Agency, had used his considerable influence. The hotel the team checked into for the night was small, but modern and busy. It was some distance from the police headquarters – and the tall square tower at the city's center - which would be the site of the next day's operation, but that was fine with Lauro. He'd already scouted the area thoroughly, and preferred at this point to stay clear until it was time to set up. The hotel had a lounge with a small bar not unlike his haunt in Rome, and that was fine with Lauro too.

He left Jose to check in while he paid a visit to a small sporting-goods store across town. He parked on the street right at its door; through its large glass window, he could see shelves lined with equipment, displays on the walls, and a man at the register who matched the description Draghi had given him. "Wait here," he said to Elsa. "I need to pick something up."

In the store, the proprietor and Lauro exchanged greetings and pleasantries that were rather less spontaneous than they appeared. Finally satisfied, the man went into a back room and returned lugging a large equipment duffel. Inside the bag, Lauro knew, was a Hecate, a large-caliber anti-materiel rifle. It was an insurance policy of sorts, to be used only if Bartoli smelled the trap on the police station's steps, or the sniping attempt should fail some other way, and the target tried to drive away. Lauro knew his best chance to get the man would be the first, and he was determined not to fail.

The proprietor passed him the bag, its long strap gripped in both hands. "It's heavy."

Lauro slung the strap over his shoulder, and winced. The weight wasn't all that great, but the off-balance load sent a needle of pain into his lower back. He straightened, trying not to show the hurt, and walked carefully towards the door as the fire spread upward. As soon as he stepped outside, two things happened: he noticed that the Rover was empty, and the weight of the bag hanging from the shoulder strap disappeared, so suddenly that he staggered a step. He glanced down to see Elsa holding it in her hands. He swallowed the automatic 'thank you' that nearly slipped out, instead saying, "I told you to wait in the car."

She looked up at him with pain in her eyes, and he swallowed another automatic reaction. "I was watching the window. I could see you were hurting. I just …"

"Put it in the car," he said dismissively. "Let's go."

Back at the hotel, he found Jose waiting in the lobby with his cyborg. After a glance at Elsa and her duffel, Jose handed Lauro a pair of key cards. "This one is Elsa's. Three rooms - one for you, one for me, and one for the girls. I already sent the bags up." He read Lauro's face and said, "Something wrong?"

Lauro had expected no trouble keeping Elsa separated from Jose's cyborg; the two puppets would naturally stick close to their handlers, he'd thought, and Lauro would be able to keep an eye on them whenever they were together. When he traveled with Elsa, she usually slept in a chair in his room, if at all. He hadn't anticipated Jose setting up a little pajama party for the two 'girls'; in retrospect, it seemed a monumental oversight. "Elsa … she's not used to sharing a room."

Jose lifted his eyebrows, his thought plain: _why would you care?_ "And Henrietta's used to a top bunk instead of twin beds. I'm sure they can manage for one night. Aren't you?"

They ate in the hotel's small restaurant adjoining the lounge. When the waiter arrived and distributed four menus, Lauro picked Elsa's off the table and chose something cheap and filling for her.

"The fare is heavy with polenta dishes and Piedmont whites," Jose said. "We're deep in enemy territory, all right."

Lauro looked over the top of his menu and saw with irritation that Jose was allowing Henrietta to make her own selection.

"I don't think I want the pomodoro," she said.

Jose smiled at his menu. "Order anything you like. Just don't try to kill the waiter before dessert is served."

Henrietta colored, and stuck her face into the upraised menu. Lauro glanced across the table at Elsa, who stared back blankly, as in the dark as he. _You can't have it both ways_, he told himself. _If you won't let her chat with them, she doesn't have much chance to pick up gossip. Too bad. That sounded like something I'd like to know._

Henrietta said, "I can't decide. Will you choose?"

"You need to learn to make your own decisions." Jose's bantering tone changed to something stiffer as he put his face deeper into his menu. "And live with them."

"I'll have what Elsa's having," she said suddenly.

Jose nodded. "I thought you might."

Lauro pushed down his rising irritation. _Why didn't he just order for her, then? Why play these ridiculous games?_

Conversation was minimal throughout the meal; Lauro had already discussed the job in detail with Jose, and the other subject he was interested in wasn't one wasn't one he cared to discuss with the cyborgs present. After dinner, he decided, he'd invite Jose to the bar, and try once more to coax something out of him. He wasn't hopeful; Jose hadn't given up a thing the night before in the little bar near Vatican City.

His faint hope faded further towards the end of the meal, when the girls were served tea and the men espressos. Lauro watched the other handler stir sugar into his drink. When the waiter offered grappa, Lauro took a 'coffee-killer' portion of the grape brandy that nearly filled the tiny cup, but Jose accepted only the traditional few drops after sugared espresso – a 'rinse'. "Jose. Feeling under the weather from last night?"

"No," Jose said, "but we're working tomorrow." He consulted the menu once again. "Besides, I'd rather not get tiddly with the girls here. What sounds good for dessert?"

-0-

"Chess is actually a simple game," Jose said as he set up the board, which was inset into the little table in alternating squares of light and dark wood. The pieces were wood as well, large ones in the Staunton style that would easily fit a child's hand. He and Henrietta were sitting in comfortable chairs in the hotel lobby, which they had to themselves. "There are only ten or twelve rules, and most of them are descriptions of how the board is set up and the different pieces move. You won't have any trouble."

"Okay." She surveyed the board doubtfully.

_At least she's out of her funk_, he thought. He'd known from conversations with the other girls that Elsa was a loner, and had noticed Henrietta's reservations about working with her from the start. But, as they'd packed the cars for the trip, he'd noticed some new trouble between the girls that he didn't understand. Henrietta had been quiet for half the trip, very unlike her when they were alone. It had bothered him enough that, when he'd tried to get her to open up, he'd actually asked her if she'd been to Siena before – as if she'd remember any time she'd been here without him.

After dinner, hoping to build a relationship with the strange fratello, he'd invited Lauro and Elsa to pass the evening with them over one of the many board games available at the desk, or perhaps a game of cards. But, after exchanging a look with her handler, Elsa had said, "I think I'll just turn in." Lauro had excused himself and retired to the bar. Alone with Henrietta, he'd suggested a game of chess. He knew she didn't play, but with cyborgs class was always in session.

"It's a war game, stylized combat. Its roots go back thousands of years, but the roles the pieces play in the battle still have equivalents in modern fighting." He picked up the king. "This is the king, the one all the others on your side protect, and the one all the others on the opposite side are after. It's the only piece that can't be captured, because the game ends one move before it happens. He can move one square in any direction, as long as he doesn't place himself in check." He smiled as he set it in its place at the back rank. "The king is a very cautious leader."

"Good," she said. "He looks a little like the monument near the main building, doesn't he?"

Jose looked at the stubby cross atop the piece. "A little. This one is a bishop. It moves along the squares from corner to opposite corner, diagonally, as many unobstructed squares as he likes. Think of him as a sniper. If you can get him in a safe place on high ground …" He placed the piece near the center of the board. "He can provide cover for the other pieces, or take out an unwary enemy who moves out of cover. You have two, one for the black squares, one for the white, which means they can cover any square on the board between them."

"But they can't cover each other."

"That's right," he said, surprised at her quick grasp. He picked up a rook. "These move like bishops, but along the ranks and files. They can each cover every square on the board, so they can support each other. Think of them as your heavy weapon team." Next, he showed her the knight. "This fellow with a head like a seahorse is a trickster. He moves in an L-shaped jump, always landing on a square opposite in color from the one he left." He demonstrated, hopping all over the board. "Sometimes he acts as a special-ops commando, finding a way past the enemy lines the others can't reach and causing panic. Other times, he's more like a mortar crew, ready to drop trouble on the terrain all around and hamper enemy movement." He set it in the middle of the board and touched the eight squares it covered.

"And the tall pretty one, that looks like it has a crown on its head?"

"That," he said, "is the queen, the most powerful and feared piece on the board. She can do anything a bishop or a rook can do. Very useful." He demonstrated, taking the piece all over the board with a few moves. "Use her carefully. If you lose her by mischance against a good player, your chances of winning drop to near zero." He rested a finger on a piece in the front rank. "Finally, the pawn. A good little soldier, he advances to establish a defensive wall and protect the other pieces. He can usually only move forward one square at a time, I'm afraid, and he can only attack the squares on his forward diagonals. Pawns are often the first pieces to fall in a game. Players frequently sacrifice them for a positional advantage for the major pieces."

She nodded. "So each side has eight cyborgs."

The next thing he was about to say stuck in his throat. "No," he said after a moment. He picked up the queen from the center of the board and set it in its accustomed place, right beside the king. "Only one."

-0-

Lauro sat alone at one end of the little bar, his manner uninviting enough that the other barflies left him in peace. Bringing Croce and his cyborg along had been a mistake, he decided. He hadn't picked up anything new from the other handler in the bar the night before, and tonight the man wouldn't even drink with him, preferring the company of his adoring little tool. The two of them were going to be excess baggage on the op, he saw now; he and Elsa could have handled it alone, just by him putting down the binoculars and manning the second rifle, though such setups usually ran smoother with a full-time spotter. There had been nothing gained by inviting them along, really.

And, he uneasily suspected, they were a bad influence on Elsa.

He shook his head and downed his drink, thinking about the little incident in the car on the way to town. Elsa, wanting to _chat_. Next, he supposed, she'd be sharing her _feelings_, and wanting him to _open up_ to her. Once they were started down that path, where would it end? Would they quarrel? Maybe she'd get moody and slow to follow orders. Or …. He could imagine all kinds of possibilities, none of them good. And it had all started, he was sure, with her watching Jose treat his puppet like a little princess.

He pushed his glass forward for a refill. At the first sign that Elsa's performance was being degraded because she couldn't remember what she was, he'd have to discipline her somehow. It was either that or increase her conditioning level, and Lauro really didn't want to have to retrain her. Physical punishment? He could send her running around the campus until she dropped, and she wouldn't complain. Withhold privileges? What privileges did she have? As far as he knew, she didn't have any possessions he could take from her. 'Train your cyborg as you see fit' probably didn't extend to forcing her to skip meals or taking her mattress; and again, he wasn't sure if she'd really care. Was there anything that mattered to her?

_There's one thing_, a little voice murmured. _But you're already withholding that_.

The bartender refilled his glass, and Lauro picked it up as soon as the bottle's mouth was clear of the rim and tossed the drink down.

Work. It was all she cared about – all any of them cared about, really, despite appearances and some of their handlers' wishful thinking. But how could he deny Elsa work? He _needed_ her.

He pushed his glass at the barman, who looked askance but turned back with the bottle to give him a refill. Time enough to think of that if and when the need came, he decided.

-0-

"Henrietta," Jose said in his gentlest voice, "you can't win if you don't attack my king."

"I know." The little brunette stared at the board, which held considerably more of her pieces than his. "I know the king isn't you. But…"

Jose looked over his position, which was hopeless. He'd spotted her a rook at the start of play, a handicap which had proved excessive. Novice that she was, she'd nevertheless grasped the principles of the game, and how the pieces worked together, very quickly. Her game was lacking strategy, but tactically formidable, full of traps and swift attacks that had savaged his defenses and gobbled pieces. But for the girl's skittishness about placing him in check, he'd have been mated already. A draw was inevitable.

He nodded to himself. If Lorenzo's ambitions to expand the program ever came to pass, Section Two would need squad leaders with an intimate knowledge of the cyborgs' capabilities. Jose saw no reason why such teams shouldn't be led by cyborgs, with their handlers in the background providing oversight. _If only she can develop the independence she'd need. Then maybe we could both be free and whole again._

Even though it was her move, he reached for his king. He hesitated with his finger on the piece, and removed it from the board rather than performing the traditional tip-over. "Concede. Very good work, Henrietta."

-0-

Elsa stood under the stream of water from the showerhead, gritting her teeth as she ran the washrag over her forearm. The water puddling around her feet turned pink as the thin sticky crusts over her mauled flesh dissolved and the wounds leaked afresh. The soap and water stung, but the wounds had to be washed regularly, or they started to smell. She couldn't allow that; it would attract notice.

Her fingers glided over a hard bump just under the surface: one of three bullets still imbedded in her left forearm. This one had been in there a long time; apparently her recent activity had worked it to the surface. She pushed and pinched at it, grunting with pain, until she could dig into the wound and insert a fingertip underneath. She pulled out the shiny pellet and examined it: a rifle bullet, seven-six-two, smaller than the last joint of her little finger. They felt so much bigger when they went in. A trickle of scarlet appeared between her feet, slithered to the drain, and was gone. She set the bullet in the soap tray and continued washing. But, even after she'd finished with her arms and the pain was fading away, her teeth stayed clenched.

What had possessed her to try to strike up a conversation with Lauro in the car? They never talked about unimportant things, things that had nothing to do with training or the job at hand. But, in the side view mirror of Lauro's Rover, she'd seen Jose and Henrietta talking in the car behind, and …

They'd looked happy together. And Elsa was certain they hadn't been talking business.

She scoffed. Jose wasn't Lauro. And wanting Lauro to be different was a heretic notion that made her feel guilty and ungrateful.

She finished and rinsed the rag thoroughly. Then she stepped out and toweled off, as usual skipping her forearms; a blood-spotted towel in the shared bathroom here, as at the dorm, might raise questions. She pulled her slip carefully over her head while she allowed them to air-dry.

She wasn't careful enough. Trying to shrug into the slip without using her arms, she snagged one of the spaghetti-thin shoulder straps on her wet skin, and it parted. She scowled down at the threadbare garment, translucent in spots from wear. She hadn't brought her sewing kit, but maybe Henrietta had something. Elsa supposed the other cyborg would be downstairs with her handler for some time yet; she'd never miss a safety pin or a few centimeters of thread.

Henrietta's travel bag lay at the foot of her bed. Elsa hauled it up, surprised at the weight, and set it on the spread. She unzipped it and looked inside, and stopped, transfixed.

The other girl had packed as if for a weeklong trip. The bag held several changes of clothes, from stockings to hair bands. A brush and comb and hand-mirror. Tooth powder and brush. Scented soap and skin lotion and… _perfume_. Everything looked new. The clothing smelled of new fabric and washing. Every bit of it must have come from her handler; the Agency provided room and board, weapons, training facilities, and little else. Elsa's hand clenched around the bag's strap. She'd brought nothing but her assault rifle and sidearm and a few items in her coat pockets. It was nearly all she had.

A little gasp from the doorway snapped Elsa's attention back to her surroundings. Henrietta stood in the doorway staring.

Elsa zipped the bag shut. "I didn't take anything. I was just looking for a needle and thread." Her slip had shifted on the side with the dangling strap; she pulled it up and held on to the broken strap.

"Here." Henrietta shut the door quickly and stepped to the bed. She unzipped her bag and spread it open. She pulled out a slip adorned with a frill collar and a little ribbon in front, very girlish and maidenly. "We're almost the same size, you're just a little taller. I'm sure this will fit you." She held it out.

Instead of reaching for the garment, Elsa stared at it, frowning. "I didn't ask you for anything."

"I know. But I want you to have it."

"Why?"

"I don't know. I just … Triela says she doesn't even like you, but she still tries to help you in school, and I see her talking to you sometimes. She says you're a challenge. All the time, we kill people we don't hate, and we help people we don't know or care about. Why should it be hard to be nice to someone we don't get along with?"

_Triela. She of the long legs, glowing skin, luminous blue eyes and budding figure. The dislike is mutual._ "What does she say about Lauro?"

"Lauro?" Henrietta seemed confused. "Just that he's all you really care about."

"She doesn't talk about his eyes? Or the way his hair falls down over his forehead that makes you want to brush it away? Or his voice, or his hands?"

"Elsa … nobody else sees him like that."

A smile of satisfaction lifted the corner of her mouth. "Then nobody else really sees him." She eyed the slip, still in Henrietta's hands, and took it. In the bathroom, she exchanged garments. She noticed the bullet in the soap dish and picked it up, intending to put it in her coat. That was when she realized Henrietta's look of shock from the doorway had been because of her bare arms, not her burglary.

She came out of the bathroom. The other girl was still standing at the bedside. Elsa said, "He doesn't know. Don't tell anyone."

"Elsa, _why_?"

"We're very busy right now. I've seen what you're all like after surgery." After all but the most minor work, the cyborgs were kept out of the field for a few days until they adjusted to their new parts and the surgical dose of conditioning drugs ran its course. "I can't afford to be laid up while everything comes back to normal. He needs me." She added, "I'm not impaired or anything. It's just a nuisance. I'll tell him when we have the time."

Henrietta laid both hands on her bag. "Elsa. Jose thought maybe you'd change your mind about coming downstairs."

Elsa leveled a look at her. "What about you? Do you want me to come downstairs?"

Elsa could see the other cyborg struggling with her answer. The reason seemed obvious: she was having to choose between being 'nice' and having her handler to herself for the evening. If it had been Elsa, the decision would have been instant. Finally, Henrietta said, "It's okay. I'll wait for you."

"Where's Lauro?"

"He's in the bar. We can't go there."

"I'll stay up here, then." She added, "Thanks."

-0-

Around ten, Jose declared it a night and escorted Henrietta to her room. "Are you nervous about tomorrow?"

Henrietta's head bobbed. "A little."

"Well, don't be. Forget what I said about your marksmanship yesterday. The Walther's a fine sniper rifle, but it's not really meant to be shoulder-fired. I'm sure I wouldn't have done any better. Tomorrow, you'll be set up properly, and you won't have a bit of trouble."

"Okay."

At the door, as she fished in her little purse for her card key, he said, "Are you going to be all right with Elsa tonight?"

She found the card and pulled it out, but didn't insert it into the door lock. "We're fine. She's probably asleep anyway. I don't hear the television."

He nodded. As always, his concern for her melted her heart and made her feel a little guilty; she was supposed to worry about him, not the other way around. She checked an impulse to reach for his hand. "Well," he said, "good night, then. Don't be in a hurry to get up. I won't come for you early, but I don't know if we'll have breakfast before we leave."

"Okay."

"Think about what you'd like to do tomorrow after the job's done." He seemed reluctant to leave her.

He worried so much, she thought. Did any other girl ever have a man so sweet and caring? "I will. Good night." She slipped inside quickly, before the rising joy in her heart could reach her head and erase her caution.

Elsa was lying in bed with the smallest of her pillows under her head. Her hands were under her head as well, elbows spread and raised off the mattress. She looked comfortable, but Henrietta suspected the other girl's position was assumed to keep her chewed-up forearms off the pillow and sheets. Elsa didn't speak, just stared at the ceiling as Henrietta passed by on her way to the bathroom, and stayed silent as she readied for bed. But as she turned down her covers, Elsa said, "Did you see Lauro?"

"No." She slipped between the sheets. "I think he's still in the bar. Will he … will he stop in to say good night?"

"No." A moment of silence while Henrietta settled in and arranged her pillows. "When you go out on assignment. Does he put you in a room by yourself?"

"No." She thought about her next words carefully. "Jose doesn't sleep much. We usually get one room, and I sleep in the bed. Sometimes he does paperwork all night, or talks on the phone, or watches television. But he usually just talks to me till I fall asleep. I think sometimes he falls asleep in a chair, but he's always awake when I wake up."

"I share Lauro's room too. I watch him fall asleep. Sometimes he talks in his sleep. And once, he said my name."

She didn't know what to say to that. Triela or Claes would have, she was sure. "Why … why is he all by himself in the bar? Does he always drink so much?"

"He's never laid a hand on me," Elsa said sharply.

"What? I don't understand."

"He doesn't hit me when he drinks."

"Elsa, I didn't mean that. But Jose says that people who drink all the time aren't happy."

"Jose doesn't drink all the time. Is he happy?"

She thought about that. "Not always. He tries not to let it show, but I can tell."

"Maybe if he was more honest with himself, he'd drink all the time." A pause. "When Lauro drinks, he won't look at me."

The silence stretched. Henrietta wished again that she were better at talking. She lay in silence, and presently her eyes grew heavy.

"What were you talking about in the car?"

Henrietta's eyes opened. "What?"

"On the drive up. I saw you talking in the car."

"Oh. Just … things. Jose offered to take me sightseeing tomorrow, after the job is done."

"Sightseeing. You mean, like scouting? Information gathering?"

"No. Just things he thinks I'd like to see." She felt warm all over again, remembering. "Back at the Agency, we go up on the roof of the main building at night and watch the sky. He has a telescope, and he shows me things other people can't see, just us. And he tells me stories about the stars…"

"I've heard enough." Elsa rolled over, putting her back to her roommate.

But, for a long time after Henrietta's breathing eased down into sleep, Elsa lay awake, staring at the wall.

She roused shortly before dawn to turn over her sodden pillow. The damp cloth was still warm, as it always was when she woke. Unlike the other cyborgs, her nightly tears were no mystery to Elsa. She remembered her dreams. Lauro was in them all.

-0-

Lauro was driving, Elsa beside him. He looked in the rearview at the empty road behind them. Something about that bothered him, but he didn't know what. The scenery passed by in a blur: it could have been Tuscany, but it could have been almost anywhere, really. The road was eerily smooth under the Rover's tires, almost as if it was flying over the surface instead of rolling. It gave him a disembodied feeling, as if the car and its occupants were the only real things in the universe.

"Lauro," Elsa said, her head turned towards the window and the blurry scenery.

His unease increased. "Yeah?"

"Lauro, why don't you talk to me? You're my whole life, but all I ever get from you is orders and criticism. You know I'd do anything for you. Why can't you treat me like a human being once in a while? Is it really so hard?"

His throat closed, and he couldn't even swallow.

"You could tell me so much. I want to know everything about you. I was never a child, not like you. It would mean so much to know what that was like for you. I'd love to meet your family. I don't even know your mother's name." She was still facing the window, and he couldn't see her face. "We could go places together, not just work. Do things, share things." She turned towards him then, and her eyes were huge and blank and shiny as glass. He saw her pupils contract and dilate like camera lenses as she shifted focus. "Be together forever, like you promised. Do you remember?" Her lips weren't moving; the words came out of her open mouth as if from a speaker. She raised her hands from her lap, and he saw that her first two and last two fingers of each hand were tight together, turning her hands into three-fingered grippers. "I love you, Lauro." She reached for him.

Pain lanced through Lauro's lower back, and he realized he'd jerked upright in bed. He looked around wildly, but he was alone in the room. Then he remembered where Elsa was. He took his hand off the pistol under the pillow behind him and let out a breath. His pajamas were damp from collar to cuffs. _Maybe it's good she's spending the night in a different room after all._


	9. The Last Straw

TWO

The team took the Rover from the hotel, since it was the only vehicle big enough to hold all four of them plus their equipment. Their route took them past the town plaza, and Lauro slowed for a good look. The town hall's square clock tower was a showy affair, a medieval structure of red-brown brick a hundred meters tall, capped with a crown of white stonework and surmounted by a huge bell barely visible from the ground. It rose from one corner of the castle-like building, casting a long shadow across the public square even in mid-morning. The only windows big enough to aim through were all the way up at the top. Lauro took one look at it and decided to add his equipment to Elsa's load for the climb.

From the shotgun seat, Jose eyed the plaza, which was already filling with people. "Looks like our sniping position is a tourist destination."

"Not today," Lauro said. "It's been undergoing some renovations for the past few days, and closed to visitors."

"Our weapons aren't silenced."

"They don't need to be. By the time the sound of the shot reaches the ground, it'll be so faint and scattered no one will be able to tell where it came from. Crowd noises might even cover it."

Jose studied the ornate marble loggia at the base of the tower. Closed or not, people were sitting and standing all around the public entrance. "How do we get in and out without being seen? Is there a back way?"

"A service corridor under the town hall. It'll take us from the parking lot behind the building to a staircase that comes out next to the base of the tower on the inside." They rolled past, and the plaza disappeared from view. "I'm telling you, I've got it all planned out." _Second thoughts, Jose? And, if so, are they about the plan, or your girl's ability to carry it out?_

They navigated narrow, curving streets hemmed in by tall buildings centuries old, and arrived at the lot. The uniformed guard at the lot's entrance laid a finger beside his nose as he watched them roll past without stopping.

Jose gave Lauro a sideways glance. "How'd you arrange that?"

"With a small bribe and a small lie." Actually, Lauro had no idea; private access to the tower, like the Hecate, had been provided by Draghi, albeit at Lauro's request.

The stair head was just inside the entrance, and they descended one floor to a long, slightly crooked tunnel whose walls and low ceiling were run with pipes. It ended at another stair, which they climbed to ground level again. A pair of doors across the hall from it were locked, with a sign proclaiming 'closed for renovation', but Lauro produced a key – another item that had been in the duffel from the store - and let them in, locking the doors again behind them. Just inside was a pair of small wooden boxes. He picked them up and followed the others into the tower's base.

The interior was a staircase that wound up and up around the inside walls, with small landings at each turn. The bottom ten meters were illuminated by electric lights, but, higher up, the three-meter-thick walls were pierced with a gridwork pattern of fist-sized square holes, allowing the morning sun to reach the interior and mark the western wall with a pattern of glowing slivers that provided just enough light to ascend by.

They climbed, Jose in the lead, Henrietta following with her gun case, then Elsa, loaded with duffel, gun case, and the case containing Lauro's equipment. Lauro brought up the rear, carrying the wooden boxes the girls would need when they reached the firing position. Lauro had taken his painkillers early: his thumping head had brought them to mind when he woke, and he told himself he'd need the help for the climb anyway. So he had no discomfort on the seemingly endless stair, though his limbs felt very heavy after the first few flights. Two steps above, Elsa shifted the baggage straps hanging from her shoulder to keep the duffel holding the Hecate from dragging. Lauro felt a momentary twinge, which he dismissed, chiding himself; she wasn't overloaded, the strap was just a little long. Elsa could carry _him _up the stairs if he told her to.

"This is called the Tower of the Eater," Jose said; although his voice was pitched low, the stone walls sent it echoing through the tower as if he'd spoken into a well. "The patron who paid for the construction was a merchant prince who was very fond of his food, so the story goes."

"Like the Prince of Pasta," Henrietta said.

Five minutes' climb brought them to the arched windows that marked the top story of the brickwork, just below the coronation. Lauro would have liked to shoot from here, but only one window overlooked the distant steps of the station, and was a poor position: too narrow for two snipers, and having sills too deep for a good stance. They passed it by and continued up until they came out onto the parapet surrounding the base of the bell tower.

The day was clear, and the winter sun was still fairly high so close to noon, but the parapet was still mostly in shadow: the space between the crenellated outer walls and the bell tower looming high above them was narrow, and the walls tall. The white stone glowed where the sun touched it, making the shadows even darker by contrast.

Lauro dropped the boxes and pointed. "That side." The tower's northwest side overlooked the plaza, its northeast one the police station. The bell tower was a blank stone wall two steps behind them, and its shadow fell full across their position. "We're a little early. Plenty of time to set up."

Henrietta looked out one of the openings; she was just tall enough to see over the lip without a box. "It's beautiful. The view." A light breeze fluttered her hair. "The people and cars look so small without a scope."

Jose moved up behind her and looked over her shoulder. "There are plenty of things to see in Siena, and you can see most of them from here." The man's voice was, as always, soft and even when he spoke to his 'girl'; if she were half a meter taller and ten years older, Lauro thought, a passerby might have taken them for lovers.

_But she'll never be ten years older, will she? The cyborgs don't grow. And they live dog years. If you can call what they have a life._

The little brown-haired cyborg touched an iron stay, one of many set into the wall. "These look added on."

"They bind the blocks together. These stones were set in place before Columbus discovered America," Jose said. "If one should work loose and fall to the plaza, it might kill more people than a bomb."

Elsa brought his case and took the boxes without a word, setting them under two gaps in the wall. The stone walls were a bit thinner than the brickwork they rested on, less than two meters, and provided a fine gun rest for an adult-sized sniper; the boxes granted just enough added height for the cyborgs. He congratulated himself for thinking of them and having Draghi leave them for him.

He set his case on the floor and knelt to open it, enduring the cold that traveled up his knees from the stone into his back, stiffening it. He would much rather have set the case on one of the windowsills, but he didn't trust the breeze, and wasn't about to let one of _these_ photos be blown out the window to end up God knew where. He pulled out a pack of photos of the chief, his aides, and his bodyguards, and began refreshing his memory of their faces. Lauro wouldn't put it past the old bastard to use a stand-in, and shooting some cop in a silver wig would ruin the effect he wanted to produce: that, if the new gun in town had business with you, you couldn't hide or run, so you'd better co-operate.

_The same sort of effect a terrorist would want to produce. Are you really so different now?_ He pushed the thought aside; he was on the right side of this war, he told himself, and that made all the difference.

_And that's how all Lorenzo's people rationalize what they do._

"Ooh," he heard Henrietta say, from the other side of the tower. "What's that?"

"It's the Cathedral of the Assumption," Jose said, also out of sight on the other side. "The most famous church in Siena."

"The bell tower looks taller than this one."

"Exactly the same height, actually. By design. Parts of the church are almost eight hundred years old, and beautifully decorated. Would you like to see the inside?"

"Yes!"

"Put it on your list for this afternoon, then."

Lauro gave some unnecessary study to the photos of the police chief's car. _A sightseeing trip. Typical._ Then he noticed Elsa, gazing absently out a gap at the plaza below. "Everybody. Let's set up."

He took his binoculars from their case and, still kneeling over his attaché, polished the lenses as the cyborgs broke out their weapons and set them up in adjacent windows. He glanced at the weapon Henrietta was unpacking, and couldn't help giving a little scoff and headshake.

Most government agencies under arms the world over, whether they were military or civilian, overt or covert, restricted the variety of weapons in their inventories, both to minimize expense through bulk purchase and to allow agents in the field to share ammunition at need. Small numbers of unusual weapons might find their way into the hands of some specialist team, or be purchased for evaluation, but personal weapons, sidearms especially, were standardized across an agency. You could often tell who a man was working for by the piece in his holster.

Not so with Section Two. The cyborgs' training program demanded proficiency in a wide variety of armaments, and the nature of S2's 'wet' assignments demanded that the perpetrators not be easily identified by forensic evidence. So the Agency encouraged individuality in weapons choices for the fratelli, and purchased their arms the same way their enemies did, off the black market through intermediaries.

Clearly, Lauro thought, that freedom of choice had led to extravagancies – how else to explain Hilshire providing his puppet with an antique American shotgun for her favorite longarm? But to allow Jose to give his pet a Walther WA2000? A limited-run sniper rifle that had been too expensive for police agencies to afford, and, now that it was out of production, was a collector's item worth at least forty thousand euro… He shook his head again. Nothing but the best for little Henrietta.

Jose noticed Lauro's regard. "Not a purchase. It belonged to a Camorra assassin she killed, a collector. She thought it was pretty, so I let her keep it."

Lauro stuck his head back into his case.

Jose came up behind her, watching her at work. To Lauro, he said, "If we shoot the police chief right in front of his headquarters…"

_Cold feet again? What kind of trouble are you smelling? _"It'll send a clear message to the other small-town cops."

Jose nodded, seeming to put his unease aside as he watched Henrietta settle into position. "How'd you manage to score such a perfect location?"

Trying to sound as offhand as possible, Lauro said, "You know. I have my connections. These old churches and museums are all under government control." Too late, he remembered the tower was part of the town hall, neither a museum nor a church. But the other agent seemed not to catch the slip, continuing to study his cyborg as she sighted on the steps almost half a kilometer distant, minutely tracking up and down, back and forth. He supposed she was looking through the scope for windage indicators; the narrow streets sometimes hosted powerful and unexpected winds channeled by the tall buildings. It wasn't uncommon to be walking down a street without a breath of wind, turn a corner, and be almost swept away by a river of air.

Elsa approached him with the heavy rifle in her hands and a question about setting it up. He gave her instructions and sent her off. He was just about to pull another sheaf of photos from his attaché when Jose, standing over him, said quietly, "Lauro. Is Elsa doing all right today?"

"Huh?" _What have you noticed?_ Elsa was now sighting in her rifle as well. Cautiously, he said, "I don't know. She seems fine to me."

"No. She seems a little … distracted. Sometimes they get … careless when they're like that."

Lauro turned back to his case. "Elsa doesn't get distracted. She's been properly trained." Remembering Jose's earlier objections, he said, "Relax. You're just looking for trouble where there isn't any."

"Maybe." He moved up behind Henrietta. He said to her, "Do you have the range dialed in?"

"Yes. Less than six hundred meters, aim for the head."

"That's right. Elsa will take the first shot. Wait until the target is down. Remember, elevation can be tricky when you're aiming down."

"Yes."

Lauro listened to Jose coaching the little cyborg. Did Henrietta still require that kind of instruction? What was the point of having one of them if you had to stand at its shoulder all the time to make sure it did its job? At least, he thought, Jose would be able to take over for her if she couldn't handle it; by all accounts, the ex-Carabinieri was an excellent shot.

Then Lauro remembered that Jose had accepted this job as a way to boost Henrietta's confidence. It was attention he was giving her, not instruction. Lauro's nostrils flared as he watched Jose lean close to the little monster and place his hand on her back. Then he looked past, just in time to see Elsa's eyes shift from them to him, and their eyes met for an instant before she looked away as if she'd been caught doing something shameful.

Lauro stuck his face back into his case while he experienced a parade of emotions: surprise, pity, remorse, fear, anger. It was a familiar sensation by now, but it had been coming far too often since he'd teamed up with Jose. It seemed as if Elsa was taking notes and making comparisons every time she saw Jean's brother with his cyborg, and it made Lauro very uneasy. Damn that girl!

But that was the problem, wasn't it? As easy as it was to mistake them, Henrietta and Elsa weren't girls. He knew it made no sense to be angry at Elsa for acting too human – it was how she was made, after all – but he couldn't help feeling tricked every time he experienced some stirring of emotion for the little imitation of a human being. It was dangerous to forget what they were, but all too easy. Half the handlers had fallen under the cyborgs' spell already; was it just a matter of time before they all succumbed?

How much longer could he work in secret to bring down the organization that had brought Elsa into being? How long before he started worrying what would become of her with Section Two gone? Before he found himself at Lorenzo's door?

He had to get out of Section Two, and soon. But, right now, he had to get things back to normal with Elsa, before he went insane.

He watched her almost bouncing on the balls of her feet as she readied for her shot. _I'll do my best, _she'd said. Doing well was important to her. But if she could be made to see that all this mooning after what she'd never have was affecting her performance…

He dropped the strap of the binoculars around his neck and moved to the last unoccupied opening on the wall, watching the streets below with bare eyes. A few minutes later, he spotted expected movement, and brought up the binoculars. Through them, he saw, half-obscured by balconies and elevated walkways, two vehicles rolling along the narrow street towards the station. "Okay, here we go. He should be in the second car." Within the team's narrow sight window, the target's movements would be at their most predictable as he ascended the stairs. But they'd have a clear shot for only a couple of seconds. "Timing is critical. Don't shoot until he's on the steps."

"Just like in practice," Lauro heard Jose murmur, just loud enough to hear. He pulled his eyes from the glasses for a quick glance and saw the other handler leaning on the sill next to his 'girl', his nose almost in her hair. "Just take a breath and let it out when you shoot."

"Yes," she said, eye never leaving the scope but obviously very aware of him.

Lauro started to look through the glasses again before he realized his eye had traveled over Elsa on the way, and seen her gaze riveted on the two lovebirds instead of looking through her scope. Anger rose, perhaps more quickly because he realized he'd been distracted by them as well. "Elsa! Pay attention!"

She started. "Yes," she said, as if making a resolution, and returned her attention to her scope. That was when he noticed the selector switch by her thumb.

"Elsa!" He almost shouted. "The _safety's_ still on!"

Incredibly, she took her eye off the scope and _looked_ at the switch instead of feeling it with her thumb, as if she'd never fired the weapon before. "Sorry."

It was the last straw. Jose had been the start of all the trouble, Lauro thought. Maybe he could be used to set things right as well. "That's it. Jose, take Elsa's spot. Her mind's not on business today."

"Got it."

-0-

The Cathedral of the Assumption was everything Jose had said, a huge echoing space rich with decorations. "Look at the carvings," Jose said, pointing. "Men have spent their whole lives making this place beautiful."

"Yes." And the Cathedral _was_ beautiful, full of things to look at and admire, outside and in. Most of the floor was covered with rubber matting, but the visible portions were rich with mosaics and other tilework. The walls were adorned with ornate carvings and statuary. Curious black-and-white-striped pillars held up the frescoed roof high overhead. There was something to draw the eye everywhere you looked.

But it was also full of hiding places, and strangers doing things she didn't understand, and that made her worry about Jose's safety. Henrietta couldn't explain it, but, sometimes, when she was out with Jose, it seemed as if danger was all around them, thickening the air. Every stranger they passed seemed to be watching them from the corner of his eye; every innocuous conversation she overheard seemed scripted. Much of the Cathedral was roped off and attended by guards, like a museum; the ones at the door had given them curious looks when Jose showed his ID to get them past the metal detector at the entrance. But, for some reason, the guards didn't worry her as much as the visitors, people who might come and go unrecognized by security. That man near the pulpit, polishing the marble pillars which held it three meters above the floor: one of the pockets of his tool belt held a two-way radio – who might he need to talk to? Did the other pockets hold something besides spray bottles and squeegees? And the big plastic bag hanging from his cart: was it just trash and old rags making it bulge like that?

Two well-dressed young women were looking their way. Some brief remarks passed between them, too low for Henrietta to hear even in this place full of hard surfaces; they started to walk towards them. Henrietta tensed, feeling the pistol under her coat in the holster at her left hip. As they drew closer, she felt her metabolism speeding up, preparing to disarm them if they produced a pistol or knife; she was almost disappointed to see that their hands were in plain sight and holding nothing but small books.

"Good day," one of them said to Jose, smiling. "We were wondering if you might direct us to the fountain, the famous one where the horse race is held." She spoke with a faint accent – French, Henrietta thought.

"Of course," Jose said, returning the smile. "It's not far away, in the Piazza del Campo." He gave them directions, and answered a string of questions from the same woman, who was doing the talking for both, it seemed. She wasn't very smart, Henrietta decided, to need such detailed directions; after all, the plaza was only a few blocks away, and one could see the clock tower from the front door of the church.

"You know the town so well," the woman went on. "Do you live here?"

"No, we're tourists too."

"Really? From where?" The woman drew a little closer. Even though she wasn't armed, Henrietta felt her unease increase. She noted that both women had beautiful dark hair, just like Angelica's but shorter.

"Rome. I'm a reporter for _Libero Italia_. This is a combined business and pleasure trip."

"A reporter? That sounds exciting."

"Not really. Usually it's just tracking down people who'd rather not talk to you and annoying them into saying something they wish they hadn't."

The woman offered a hand. "Annette. This is my sister Clarisse."

"Pleased to meet you. Jose."

"Have you been here long? We only just got here."

"Just since yesterday. We'll be leaving this evening."

"What a shame. Will you be staying for dinner, then?"

"I'm afraid not. We have to be back before dark."

This wasn't right. She and Jose had been having such a good time, and now he didn't even know she was there. She thought of wandering off, just to see how long it would take him to notice; but there was still the man with the cart to think of. And now, another man loitering around the pulpit as well, at the foot of the sweeping stair that led to the lectern, whose leather shoulder bag might contain a camera or something else entirely. He unzipped it, produced a Nikon, and began taking pictures all around, including a shot of the four of them.

"And is this your daughter?" The woman smiled, too wide, and bent towards her. "What's your name, _cherié_?"

_Death_, she thought.

"Henrietta," Jose said. "Where are your manners?"

"Hello," she said, eyes downcast.

"She's shy around strangers," he said.

"That's not such a bad way to be," the woman said, straightening. "If you're a little girl. One hears such awful stories. Why, just this morning, the chief of police here was shot dead by gangsters. Can you imagine? She's lucky to have you to protect her. Is she yours, then?"

"My sister's child." Did she imagine the catch she heard in his voice? "The father is gone."

"So you're stepping into his shoes. You're a man who takes family seriously. That's wonderful." She was hardly a forearm's length from Jose now. "You've been here a day, you say. Do you know any good places for lunch, then?"

All by itself, Henrietta's right hand slipped inside her coat.

"Nothing I'd recommend."

The other woman spoke for the first time. "Thank you for your help. We need to go now." She hooked elbows with her sister and tugged her away. "Thank you again."

A dozen steps away, Annette said in a low voice, "What are you doing?" She spoke French, which Henrietta understood rather better than German, though she didn't have Triela's fluency in either language.

"Saving you," the other girl said, "before you disgrace yourself any more. How many more times were you going to ask him if he was married? Or if he'd like to share a meal? If I'd let you go on another minute, you'd have been rubbing on him like a cat."

Jose watched them go as well, although he couldn't have heard their conversation. "You did very well, Henrietta. I know meeting strangers isn't easy sometimes." He smiled down at her. "You've been giving that man's camera a lot of attention."

So his eye _had_ been on her, even while he was chatting with that woman. Her heart lifted. "Yes. He took our picture. He's taking pictures of everything."

Jose studied the man, who was now pointing his camera towards the frescoed ceiling. "I'm sure he's harmless. He just wants to remember his visit. Would you like to move on? I don't know what we'll find in the gardens this time of year, but something, surely."

"Yes."

On the drive to the gardens, Henrietta's thoughts turned back to Elsa and her handler. What were Elsa and Lauro doing now? Was Lauro still angry? She wondered if he ever beat Elsa. She'd said no, but…Jose had never raised his hand to her. But Captain Raballo had struck her once, and struck Claes too. And Jean had bloodied Rico's mouth during training, and the way Rico had shrugged it off had made Henrietta wonder if it was the first time. She never saw any of the men raise a hand to Olga or Ferro or Priscilla; was it different for cyborgs? Or was it different for grownups?

Or was it just different for her and Jose?

That thought made the winter day seem warm and bright.

The gardens were as bare as Jose had feared, but the greenhouse was open. They entered and walked the narrow paths lined with greenery, inhaling the smell of moist earth and fertilizer that was oddly reminiscent of gunpowder. At a crossing of the paths, she glanced down another lane and saw a splash of bright red amid all the green. "Oh. Look."

Jose led her down the new path to a cluster of bright flowers perched atop tall stems poking out of the soil. The leaves were long and slender, like fingers. She read the little sign standing in front of them. "Lycoris radiata."

"Red spider lily," Jose said. "Another name for cluster amaryllis. You see, how the petals look like a spider's legs?"

"Sort of." She reached out to touch it. "It's beautiful."

"It's poisonous, too."

She jerked her hand back.

"Not _that_ poisonous," he said, smiling. "Just don't eat it." He took hold of her wrist and guided her hand back to the petals before releasing it.

She stroked a petal gently between her thumb and her first two fingers; it was hard to concentrate on the flower, because the memory of his fingers on her wrist crowded out everything else. "It's so soft."

"It's not really a hothouse flower," he said. "It's a very old species. It only blooms in early winter, after almost everything else is dead or dying. In Japan, it's a graveyard flower, a symbol of death and sorrow. Folklore is full of sad stories told around it."

"What kind of stories?"

"Well, mostly about doomed relationships, love affairs that end badly," he said. "And, especially, lovers that fate conspires to keep apart."

She nodded. Jose really did know everything.


	10. The Beginning and the End

ZERO (Sunday)

Lauro sped south down unlit roads, the Rover's high beams pushing back the darkness just beyond its braking distance. Even though he'd traveled this route often and knew every curve, his speed required he give the road his whole attention. But he found himself inexplicably stealing glances at his silent passenger.

Elsa sat blank-faced, staring out the windshield at nothing. Maybe not: he knew her vision was enhanced, so maybe, unlike him, she could see something out there besides a few meters of road and approaching street signs. But her head and eyes never moved.

It reminded him of the state she'd been in up in the tower. After Jose had taken her place at the window, she'd stood as if rooted in place, just staring off, looking ready to die. He wondered then if he'd gone too far, but how could he know denying her the shot would do this? She hadn't even responded when he'd told her to pack up and get out of there. Angry and a little frightened, he'd picked up his case and left her up there, certain she'd come running after with all the equipment festooned about her. They'd descended three flights, and Jose, in the lead, had slowed, casting glances up the stairs, and a twinge of guilt had touched him, followed by irritation. "Go on," he'd said. "She'll be along."

"If she's not with us by the time we reach the bottom of the stairs, I'll go back for her."

Halfway down, they'd heard the echoes of her steps. She'd joined them at the bottom, fully laden; she'd even brought the boxes. Lauro had felt vindicated. This was a lesson she wouldn't forget.

And she hadn't, apparently, but now Lauro wasn't so sure his lesson had had the desired effect. He'd meant to sting her, not … whatever this was. It was almost like seeing her right out of surgery, her mind a blank slate, looking at everything with

_innocent_

fresh eyes. He turned his attention fully back to the road. At least she wasn't trying to make conversation, and she hadn't given him any trouble. He supposed time would tell.

They reached their destination, a little resort town full of parks and recreational facilities and rooms for rent. A regular contact of his resided here, a useful informant since his early Section One days. The man had called with a request for an immediate meet. Old associate or not, unplanned late-night meetings set Lauro's whiskers twitching, and he'd decided to bring Elsa along for a backup.

The man had directed him to their usual meeting spot in one of the parks: a baseball field, of all things. Lauro parked one lot over and killed the engine. "I need to check the setup before I go in. You remember this place?"

Elsa had finally woken from dreamland, it seemed: she was sitting up and looking at her surroundings, at least. "Yes. We meet a man here at the field with a square in one corner. Under the stands."

He nodded; maybe she was okay after all. "Right."

But she didn't reach for the door handle.

"Elsa."

She turned to look at him then, and his chest tightened. Her eyes were patient, waiting - and empty of their usual terrifying adoration. He'd always hated that look, but it frightened him to see it gone. Suddenly she was an unknown quantity. If he ordered her to reconnoiter the area, could he trust her to do it? "Elsa, go find out if he came alone."

"Right." She opened the door, slid to the ground, and disappeared into the night.

He let out a breath he hadn't realized he was holding. It was going to be all right. She was changed somehow, but she was still capable of doing her job; he just had to learn to handle her differently, that was all. Maybe things would be better, even, now that she wasn't silently begging him for … whatever it was she'd wanted from him all the time. Maybe the unintended shock he'd given her had been for the best, and would make both their lives easier.

She was back, much sooner than he'd expected. "He's alone."

"Did you check the field and all the sight lines?" A routine precaution against snipers or others who might ambush them when they left.

"No. He's under the stands, and the approach is surrounded by buildings. There aren't any sight lines. It's why he always meets you there."

_Then why did you always check before?_ He could still be wearing a wire, Lauro thought, or ready to lead them into an ambush; a check of the surrounding area was a prudent move. But, somehow, he didn't think she'd done that, either. "How do you know he didn't bring somebody with him?"

"I asked him."

Lauro felt a thud inside his ears as his teeth unclenched. "You _asked_ him?"

"He's an old friend. Don't you trust him anymore?"

He sat speechless for five or ten seconds, staring at her. Instead of casting her eyes down, she looked back at him as if she was thinking of something else while she waited for his answer. Finally, he broke lock with those

_betrayed_

spooky eyes and reached for the door handle. "I give you a job, I expect you to take it seriously."

"If it was important, you wouldn't have given it to me."

He froze with one foot on the pavement and swallowed his shock, wondering what to say next.

"We should go," she said. "He's very anxious to talk to you."

Twenty minutes later, he was walking back to the car, deep in thought, his upset at his cyborg forgotten. His informant had made the right call; what the man had given him on the situation in Milan was important enough to deliver as soon as possible. It being more important to Section One, though, he'd get it to Draghi right away, and let his boss decide how much he should tell Lorenzo.

Behind him, he heard Elsa's toe scuff the gravel as she stopped. "Lauro."

He turned. She was staring down a side trail, one that bordered the open field, skirting the edge of the woods, and ended at a different lot. He tensed. "What's wrong?"

"We need to go this way."

They'd only gone down that path once, the first time he'd visited this park with Elsa. He'd avoided it ever since whether he was with her or not. But he remembered it very well.

"_Be careful," he said as they walked down the sun-dappled path. "There are people all over the park. Try to blend in, and don't do anything suspicious."_

_Walking beside him almost close enough to brush elbows, Elsa scanned the other parkgoers as they walked or jogged past. "Like what?"_

_The corner of his mouth quirked. "I don't know. Maybe somebody will want to pinch your cheek or something. Don't mistake it for an attack." They'd been together for a month. She was already a fair shot with rifle and pistol, and was getting the basics of unarmed combat down as well. It was amazing how quickly she was picking it all up, really. But, although he'd been all over the Agency grounds with her, this was the first time he'd taken her out of the compound; the only human beings in her memory who weren't Agency people were the practice targets in the killing rooms. "Just put up with it. It's what kids always do."_

"_Right."_

"_People may want to stop us to chat. Let me do any talking past a polite 'good-morning'."_

_She nodded. "Got it. Civilians, right?"_

"_Right." He couldn't help smiling at her. She was so damned smart and eager to please. Not that he forgot what she was or anything – he could never forget that – but he just couldn't feel Draghi and the others' contempt for them anymore. Even though he was on his way to a meet, coming here with Elsa felt more like an outing._

_He paused to point out a squirrel twitching its tail on the ground nearby, and watched her face as she studied it. She said, "He doesn't seem afraid of people at all."_

"_He's waiting for a handout, the little mooch. Next time we come, maybe we'll bring something for them."_

"_We're coming back?"_

"_Yes. This is a regular meet for me, and it's time to start putting you to work."_

"_We're going to be together?"_

"_All the time."_

"_Forever?" Her voice lilted, reminding him of his other Elsa's 'happy' bark._

"_Yeah," he said with a chuckle, "forever."_

"_I'll do my best, Lauro."_

"_You always do, Elsa." Her dark-blonde hair was contained in a pair of waist-long braids; he wondered if she did them herself or if someone helped her. One of them lay on her shoulder, he noticed, and he brushed it back behind her with the edge of his hand._

"_Good morning," an older woman said from three meters away._

"_Good morning," Lauro said._

"_Good morning," Elsa echoed._

"_Your daughter is beautiful," The woman smiled down at Elsa. "And so well-behaved. You must be very proud of her."_

"_Her mother's looks. Private school," he said. "I can't take much credit, I'm afraid."_

_She scoffed. "I've seen plenty of little hellions come out of private school. It's a favorite place for people who've failed at being parents to dump their mistakes." She approached and extended a hand to him. "Maria Donata."_

"_Lauro de Sica." They shook briefly. "And this is Elsa."_

"_Well. I'm very pleased to have met you both. You should take more credit for her, Mr. de Sica. It's easy enough to see how close the two of you are, if you don't mind my saying." She smiled again at Elsa. "Take good care of him. Men need plenty of looking after, though they'd die before they'd admit it."_

"_I will," said Elsa._

"_I'm sure of it. Good-bye, Elsa de Sica." She moved off._

_Elsa turned to him. "Why did she say that?"_

"_She took us for father and daughter. It's only natural for her to think you're mine."_

"_But…. Am I?"_

_The memory of what he'd read in her file put a momentary knot in his stomach. Then he thought about it. She needed a cover story; why not? "I suppose you are. From now on, if anybody asks, tell them your name is Elsa de Sica." He started to turn down the path again and stopped at the sound of her voice._

"_Elsa de Sica," she said, sounding like a girl with a brand-new engagement ring, trying on her betrothed's name to see how it fits in her mouth. "Elsa, de Sica." She was gazing up at him with a look that bordered on worship. "Thank you."_

_Lauro felt a strange chill. "It's nothing."_

"_It's the most wonderful gift anyone has ever given me."_

_Considering her personal history was barely a month long, that didn't sound like much; but the chill deepened. It was more than knowing she was a creature of Section Two, which he was pledged to destroy; her gaze seemed to burn, as if she was the source of some strange radiance that would kill you if you were exposed to it too long. "Let's go. We've got work to do." She started towards him, eyes shining; he turned before she reached him and started walking. "And walk behind me. Watch my back."_

Lauro led the way down the path; he was sure he knew where Elsa wanted to go. He could have refused, he supposed, and demanded she follow him to the car. But there was something in her manner that made him uncertain what she'd do if he did. He jammed his hands in his pockets and tried to act bored and disinterested as his feet crunched on the stones, but he could feel the tension pressing his chin into his chest, as it often did when he was around his little puppet. He approached the spot that had haunted his thoughts for a year and said, "So, what did you want to show me again?"

"Lauro," she said, "don't you remember this place?"

His last hope that this little errand was something besides a trip down Memory Lane disappeared. He sighed loudly and stopped, turning towards her. And when he saw her eyes, flat and vacant, he was sure something bad was about to happen.

"You brought me here, to this spot. This is where you named me – Elsa de Sica." Her eyes were dead, but her voice was still young and earnest and full of entreaty. It was as if her mouth was running on automatic, repeating a message from someone who was no longer there.

"Oh," he said, as if he didn't remember. All he wanted to do was turn around and go back to the car, get down the road, get away. Right now, he didn't even care if she followed him. He rubbed the back of his neck nervously. "You're serious? I can't believe you'd remember something like that." He stared off into the trees, unable to meet her eyes.

"I could never forget that day, or forget the wonderful gift you gave me." She stood with her hands behind her back as if she were reciting, repeated perfectly but with all the original meaning gone.

He couldn't stand it anymore. He was sure that if he stayed listening to her for another second, he'd

_reach for her_

knock her down on the way to the car. "Are we through here?" He turned back and stepped past her without waiting for an answer. "Let's go. We have an early day tomorrow." He started walking. "Can't believe…" He kept muttering, not really knowing what he was saying, just trying to drown out the sound of her voice. But he couldn't help hearing anyway, and her words froze his heart.

"This is where you gave me my life, and where our life began."

He heard her turn to follow, and almost sighed with relief. Tomorrow, he was going to talk to Jean, and schedule a trip to the clinic for Elsa ASAP. This simply couldn't go on, even if he had to retrain her from scratch. And if he did, this time he'd avoid the mistake of treating her like a little kid before he knew better. Maybe he'd give her a new name, even, make a clean break with the past. He took a few steps further down the path before he realized he didn't hear her walking behind him.


	11. Feeling Around in the Dark

ZERO

"A German drinking Italian beer, that's just not right."

Hilshire huffed and examined the label on his Peroni. "When in Rome …"

The bartender smiled. "Ah, but Italians don't drink beer. Not even Italian beer. It's for export, mostly."

This was Hilshire's third trip to the little bar north of Vatican City: the first time had been with Lauro de Sica three weeks before; the second time, just a few days ago, when he knew that Lauro was out of town; tonight, after he'd checked the gate logs and seen that Lauro and Elsa were both signed out. He doubted Lauro ever brought his cyborg to his little watering hole.

He turned the long-necked green bottle in his hand. "Where do you export it?"

"America. Those people will drink anything. And England, after the Brits bought the brewery."

Hilshire made a show of looking around the bar: as on his previous visit, he and the bartender were the only ones here. He'd gotten friendly with the man, not first-name but cordial; during the course of their conversation, he'd learned the barkeep worked here almost every night. Hilshire had left generous tips after both his previous visits, earning him easy acceptance from the under-compensated barworker. "Nice place. I'm surprised you don't get more business."

"Bad location. No apartments or hotels anywhere near, just office buildings. After work, people prefer to do their drinking closer to home. There's no kitchen, so we don't even get much of a lunch crowd."

"Too bad," he said. _Very good, _he thought. He set the bottle on the counter. "Has my friend been here since I came in with him?"

"A time or two," the man said cautiously.

"Alone."

"No."

"The same man, or different?"

"Is there a reason you don't ask him these things?"

Hilshire slid a hundred across the bar. "Yes. I don't want him to know I'm inquiring. You see, he's not such a good friend." Then he produced another, and slid it across the bar as well. "Describe them."

PLUS ONE

"Damn." The young investigator bent over the body and took another picture; his flash threw sharp shadows across the grass and made the frosty ground glitter. "I think I'm going to be sick."

Inspector Barachi looked the junior detective over, and decided the statement wasn't hyperbole; the young fellow did look a little more peaked than the pallid light of an early winter morning outdoors would account for. He reminded himself that young Leo wasn't new to the force, just new to Homicide, and hadn't seen many corpses, likely. Especially not children's corpses.

The girl, about twelve years old, rested face-up on the wide gravel path, arms and legs somewhat spread, looking rather like a discarded doll. Her right eye was gone, as was the back of her skull, likely, judging by the meter-wide pool of blood beside her head. An adult male lay facedown in a similar pool just six or eight meters down the path. Their feet were pointed towards each other, indicating they'd been walking in the same direction, the man leading and the child following about ten steps behind when it happened. The pair lay as they'd been found, except for the man's wallet, which Barachi had carefully fished from the back pocket so Leo could run the ID. The thin frost was disturbed only by the two detectives' footprints. The early-morning jogger who'd found them hadn't gotten within three meters; all the blood had convinced him they were beyond his help. "Looks like they were murdered late last night," Barachi said, to get the young man's mind back on business. He indicated the man's arms at his sides. "Fell like a tree. Dead before he hit the ground."

"The man runs an import business in Rome," the boy said, acknowledging his superior's reminder. "The girl's his daughter. The motive doesn't appear to be robbery – his wallet's full of cash. Odd. Why would the perp leave his gun behind?"

_He didn't_, Barachi thought. _The perp didn't go anywhere, either_. "Good question. You certainly don't see fine German pistols like that at your average street crime," he said, giving his young partner a clue. Let the boy work it out for himself, he thought. The lesson would stick better. It was amazing how your presuppositions could cause you to overlook the obvious. If the girl had been ten years older, he was sure Leo would have seen it right away. But kids were always presumed to be innocent, or at least victims. Still, couldn't he see that the pistol lay centimeters from the girl's right hand, just as it would have upon slipping from her grip as she fell dead? And didn't he wonder what these two were doing out here near midnight on a school night?

It would be the father's gun, Barachi decided, and unregistered. He was an importer, after all, and would know people. She'd laid hands on it, and, when he'd led her here, she'd shot him from behind. Then she'd turned the gun on herself, staring Death in the eye before pulling the trigger. That, Barachi thought, called for some serious determination – and planning. This hadn't been an impulsive act, like some bridge-jumper who changed his mind halfway down; she'd thought this through.

He wondered what the forensic pathologists would find when they undressed her for examination. Would there be evidence of neglect? Beatings? Sexual imposition? Or had the abuse been subtler? Children seemed so ill-prepared to deal with life these days; all it took was a few harsh remarks on Facebook to unhinge some of them. He sighed softly. This was going to be one of those cases that made headlines and disillusioned young assistants.

"Inspector Barachi," one of the uniforms taping off the scene called.

"What have you got?" Barachi called back.

"A couple of investigators from Intelligence." The cop waved an arm at two trench-coated men waiting at the tape.

Five minutes later, Barachi and Leo were walking back to their car, relieved of all responsibility for the investigation. Leo said, "Don't you think it's odd, them showing up like that?" His eyes lingered on a pair of policemen who were just finishing taping off the area before they left. "How would Intelligence even find out?"

Barachi resisted the impulse to shake his head at his assistant's naiveté. The Office of Domestic Intelligence had been created to uncover threats to the nation's internal security originating outside its borders –_agents provocateur_ and the like - but for years it had been devoting more time to watching Italy's own fractious and divided citizens than anything else. "A little bird?" He said nothing else, since the chances were good that the informant was one of their superiors.

That didn't explain the spooks' interest, of course, or why they'd taken the investigation away from those best equipped to handle it. Intelligence's usual procedure in cases where they had an interest was to let the police do all the grunt work and then confiscate the findings under one security act or another. It seemed as if Intelligence didn't want any questions answered for them about this one.

He opened the car's passenger door. "If they want to clean up the mess, fine by me." It wasn't, but he had in his hand a document envelope that said it had better be. That envelope proved the interest of someone with the power to pull several important people from their beds and induce them to sign official documents with no questions asked; a mere police inspector who bucked such a current would find himself swept downstream and over the falls.

He got into the car, and waited for Leo to enter and close his door before he spoke again. "Besides," he said, adjusting the rear-view mirror to watch the two strangers, "I don't think they're regular Intel." The 'Intelligence agents' had walked right past the murdered man to examine the girl, as if it were she who was the subject of their 'ongoing investigation'. "Too good, and too focused." The tall blond one who'd done all the talking had taken a knee and was bending over the girl; Barachi was sure the man knew more about her than Barachi did. It occurred to the inspector that a clean head shot with a nine-millimeter from eight meters wasn't something one was likely to accomplish on a first try without practice.

The inspector leaned back in the seat as Leo started the car and put it into gear. "Well, they got the papers signed by the right people. Best to let sleeping dogs lie, eh?" _Especially one so likely to bite when roused._

-0-

Hilshire unlocked the door to Lauro's apartment using the custodian's spare key, purchased with a small bribe. Lauro and Elsa, he was sure, were still lying in the park like broken toys, camera shutters clicking over them; he'd gotten Lauro's address and rushed to it as Jean and Lorenzo had begun making calls. There was a chance the police might reach Lauro's place before the investigation was taken out of their hands, and Hilshire had come here to search for clues to the fratello's killers – and sensitive information about the Agency - ahead of them.

Lauro's place was a typical bachelor's pad: small, ill-furnished, and half-heartedly kept. Hilshire was a bit surprised; as often as Lauro signed Elsa out on 'personal business', he'd thought the man might have brought his little cyborg home on occasion to clean. He was sure Elsa would have made the place sparkle for him. But there were dishes in the sink and dust in the corners, and no signs of shared occupancy or even visitation. _Lauro didn't have a girlfriend either, _he thought as he walked through the kitchen and living room, touching nothing he didn't intend to take with him. _He was like the rest of us in that regard, at least. _The table in front of the couch was a scatter of notes concerning the Tuscany operation. A laptop and an empty attaché sat closed on the kitchen counter. He gathered the papers into the case and began a more careful search.

He found the old photo album in the bottom drawer of the bedroom dresser. More from curiosity than any hope of finding something significant, he leafed through the pages crowded with old photos. There were quite a few family shots, but most of them were of Lauro as a child and young man. Many of the pages were titled, describing a theme for the collage they displayed: _Vacation in Sicily_, _Lauro and Father Building the New Shed_, several others. Hilshire was surprised to see that Lauro seemed to have had a happy childhood, and a mother or sibling caring enough to compile an album such as this. He turned a page detailing some school event, glanced at the next, and stopped, transfixed.

The book was now open to an elaborate double spread of Lauro, at ages ranging from perhaps ten to eighteen, always in the company of a big yellow dog. The pictures crowding the pages showed them running together, playing fetch, wading at the seashore. Demonstrations of a number of tricks, Lauro beaming as the dog performed. Lauro sharing his food with the dog at a picnic, giving it a bath in an old galvanized tub – boy and dog equally wet – and curled up in sleep with it, an arm around its neck. One shot showed them wrestling, the dog pinning him to the ground with its front paws and covering him with dog kisses, Lauro laughing and half-heartedly trying to push it off. And another, a profile of them face-to-face and inches apart, gazing into each other's eyes.

The title of the collage was: _Lauro with Elsa, His First and One True Love._

_Not the neighbor's dog,_ he thought. _Lauro's_.

He shut it quickly, tossed it on the bed, and finished his search. He tucked the laptop under his arm, and the album joined the sensitive paperwork in the case. It was only after he'd left the apartment and locked the door behind him that he wondered why he'd taken the album. He'd come to prevent strangers from learning the Agency's business; what secret was he trying to keep out of the light with the theft of the picture book? He couldn't say; he only knew that he didn't want anyone else to see what he had just yet, not even his fellow agents.

He took a breath and let it out as he opened his car and tossed the attaché on the passenger seat. The case seemed to stare at him as he got in. Hilshire puzzled over his feelings of unease over the album on the short drive back to his apartment across the river. There was nothing compromising in those pictures, really. Lauro had an official identity, a 'cover,' as did all the agents of Section Two. Lauro's was that of an importer of semiconductors; Elsa was supposed to be his daughter. What were the chances some stranger would open this book and make a connection between Lauro de Sica's daughter and his beloved boyhood pet? No, there was something else about that album that made Hilshire uneasy.

While he was thinking about it, why did Lauro allow Elsa to masquerade as his daughter? The cover identity Lauro had chosen for his cyborg was a much tighter relationship than the 'niece' subterfuge the other handlers usually employed, and unnecessarily hard to maintain. One might have taken it as a gesture of affection if not for Lauro's vehement and oft-repeated opinions on the subject of 'getting too close' to the cyborgs. It was another puzzle piece that didn't fit.

_Did he love her after all? But why couldn't he show it, then, or even admit it, even to himself? Who or what kept him from giving her what she so plainly needed from him?_

It occurred to Hilshire that he might have taken the book because he'd felt embarrassed for Elsa. He examined that notion, and decided that he was approaching the truth but hadn't reached it. It seemed to him that something about Lauro and Elsa's relationship prompted an unease that extended to include all the cyborgs, and the handlers as well.

-0-

"I don't think I've ever met someone from Section Two." Eleanora Gabriella stared out the little car's passenger window as they pulled into the park's lot, looking at the row of official vehicles and the trailer housing the portable crime lab arranged to help hide the crime scene from view. "What are they like?"

"The ones who don't handle cyborgs aren't so different from us," said Pietro Fermi, Section One's chief investigator, as he shifted the car into park. "I've met a few. As for the puppeteers, that's something else. I don't know." He stared out over the crime-scene tape at two figures who stood in the field beyond looking their way. One of them, he noted, looked no bigger than a child; the other was just bringing a phone down from his ear.

"Isn't a joint investigation like this unusual?"

"Very."

"Then why? Doesn't the Chief think they're capable? And why are we taking an interest in a hit on Section Two's turf?"

Pietro reached for the door handle. "The man was a former Section One agent, and an old friend of the Chief's. That's our interest." _But not the only one,_ he thought. Unlike Eleanora, Pietro had gotten his orders directly from Director Draghi. However possible, Section One's 'independent investigation' was to be used as an opportunity to embarrass Section Two, as well as a fishing expedition to learn about the cyborgs whatever might be interesting - 'interesting' being defined as anything about them that the puppeteers wanted kept secret.

Eleanora looked out over the field as Pietro locked up. "Is that a child he has with him? Oh," she said, as she realized she was getting her first look at one of Section Two's puppets. "What should we do?"

"Don't bother it, and I suppose it won't bother you," he said. His nostrils twitched as he realized he'd given his partner the same warning when they'd visited a _pentito_ who kept Dobermans.

-0-

"I hope you're not going to talk to me about 'professional ethics' or 'patients' privacy', Doctor," Hilshire said to Doctor Bianchi. "Both parties are dead, and besides, I know you routinely let people observe the cyborgs' interviews, even people who aren't handlers."

Hilshire had never sat on the other side of the one-way glass during Triela's monthly talk with Bianchi. When the doctor had invited him, he'd demurred. "I know everything about Triela that I need to from talking with her. She's very open." That statement had caused Bianchi's eyebrows to twitch, but he'd said nothing, and had never invited Hilshire again.

Hilshire couldn't deny - to himself, at least - that he was curious. But he felt that his little partner should have some measure of privacy in her own mind. He knew that Olga and Amadeo had sat in to watch and listen from the observation area, but he'd told them he disapproved and had no interest in hearing what they'd overheard. 'Cyborgs' rights' wasn't a concept of any significance at Section Two - even, apparently, to people who seemed to look on them with affection.

"The purpose of the interviews isn't psychoanalysis, just evaluation." Bianchi opened a file drawer. "They're test subjects, not patients. I keep the records close, but that's just to keep them from becoming common knowledge and possibly skewing subsequent interviews. And to safeguard the handlers' privacy. Sometimes the girls make some rather embarrassing statements." He produced a DVD in a clear case. "All her interviews, up till six weeks ago. She missed the last appointment because she was out on assignment. We never rescheduled."

So she wouldn't be revealing any last thoughts for the record, Hilshire thought. "How would you describe her state of mind? At the last interview?"

Bianchi's eyes hooded. "Look at them yourself. All of them. Earliest to most recent, I suggest. And then draw your own conclusions." The doctor offered the case to Hilshire, but, as Hilshire grasped it, held on and locked eyes. "Lauro never sat in on any of Elsa's sessions either. His rationale was the same as yours, almost word for word. Just something to think about while you watch."

-0-

Pietro closed Triela's door and took a few steps down the corridor before he asked his partner, "What did you make of all that?"

Pietro and Elle had driven to Section Two to look things over under the pretense of gathering background on the victims; the agent they'd met at the park, Jean Croce, had ordered his puppet to show them around. Pietro had lifted his eyebrow when Croce had demanded the cyborg surrender her gun at the compound's entrance, since the man's manner made plain it wasn't usual procedure. In the park, Pietro had flung a coin at Croce's head to test his little bodyguard, and had been disagreeably surprised at Rico's instant – and decisive – reaction: a second after the piece had left his fingers, it was clutched tight in Rico's fist and Pietro was staring down the barrel of her pistol. Was Croce worried that, unsupervised, his little tool might shoot the Section One man?

Until he and Eleanora had met Triela, there'd been few surprises at Section Two – nothing to shake his prejudices, anyway. Once Pietro had learned that Croce's little puppet could speak, he'd tried to quiz her, but Rico had offered minimal answers to his questions and dismissed the subject of Elsa's death. "It makes no difference to me," she'd said.

Elsa's room had looked like a space to store unused furniture, not a place a young girl called her own; he'd looked at the little double bunk, the mattresses covered only by plain sheets, and wondered if the cyborgs slept.

"Most of us share rooms," Rico had said, sounding almost apologetic. "But Elsa had her own."

Eleanora, her upset showing, had said, "I hope the other rooms aren't this depressing."

"Henrietta and Triela have lots of stuff in their rooms," Rico had said, showing a little animation for the first time. "I think their handlers give them presents …" Then the emotion had leached out of her. "But I don't know that for sure." The changes in the girl's tone, up and down, had made Eleanora turn to her and stare.

Pietro had noticed an item on the windowsill: a picture in a frame. He'd picked it up and studied it: just a photo of the upper stories of some buildings taken through the windshield of a car – until he'd seen the eye in the rear-view mirror. Thinking an identification of the man might be useful – though he already suspected whose image it was - he'd stuck the picture in his coat pocket as they'd turned to leave.

On their way down the hall to visit Triela, another cyborg, one whom Rico had said knew Elsa rather better than the other girls did, Pietro had asked, "Do you share a room, Rico?"

"Uh huh," she'd said. "With Henrietta. Triela shares with Claes."

_You share a room with this 'Henrietta', _Fermi had thought, _but you don't know where all her 'stuff' comes from. Guarding their privacy? Or an inhibition against discussing handler-cyborg relations with strangers?_ Draghi had made vague mention of possible 'inappropriate' behavior in the cyborg teams; Fermi had decided that this 'Henrietta' was a cyborg he should meet. "Is your roommate here?"

"No. She's out with Jose."

Eleanora had made a note in her book. "Claes. Another girl with a boy's name?"

"Yes. Claes is really smart. She knows everything."

_Claes sounds like someone I'd like to talk to, _Pietro had thought. _If I can get any answers out of her._

Then they'd arrived at Triela's door, and his assumptions had been turned on their heads.

Eleanora glanced up and down the hall before answering Pietro's question. Despite the many doors set into the walls of the corridor, there was no traffic, and the building felt almost empty. When she was sure they were alone, she said, "Well, first, this conditioning of theirs must really be something. You can almost see the track switch being thrown in front of their train of thought when they approach certain subjects, can't you? It reminds me of post-hypnotic suggestion. And I'd very much like to meet her handler."

Pietro nodded. Triela had told him that Elsa and most of the other 'girls' were infatuated with their handlers. But when he'd asked the little blonde about her feelings for hers, her eyes had shifted up and to the left, a common indicator that the person being questioned was about to lie; then she'd given him some sophomoric rationalization about why her relationship was different. "I wish the other one hadn't run out of the room."

Claes, a bespectacled brunette about Triela's age, had stared him down from her seat as he'd stood at the door; as soon as Rico had introduced them, she'd closed her book, stood, and left. _You don't need me here, _she'd said, sounding almost angry. Rico had disappeared shortly after, leaving the three of them alone.

Eleanora made a little note in her book. "Well, if what Triela told us was true, she might be easily upset by talk about dead handlers."

"What was that business about flowers, do you suppose?"

Pietro's partner smiled as they emerged from the dormitory building into the cool air outside. "Her thinking might be tightly channeled, Pietro, but she's smart. She was telling you she's on to you."

Pietro paused halfway into his coat. "On to me?"

"You were so obvious. The body language, the eye contact, the soft voice. When a man speaks of love to a girl, even one that young, the topic is never casual. I could almost see the lights dim, and the candle appear between you on the table."

He turned to her, eyes wide. "What are you saying?"

"Oh, don't look at me like that. I know you weren't trying to coax her into bed. But it was a seduction attempt, just the same. There are things we're going to want to know about Section Two after we leave here. It would be nice to have someone on the inside to talk to."

That had been part of it, he admitted to himself. Another part had been Triela's reaction when Rico had introduced them at the door as Section One agents. Croce had done a poor job hiding his hostility during their meeting at the park. 'I've been expecting you,' he'd said, a statement that could have more than one meaning, and had offered his hand still inside his glove. Pietro had kept his on as well, and they'd clasped through two layers of leather armor while they mouthed meaningless pleasantries, embracing without really touching. That had been the high point of their relationship, which had gone downhill with the speed of a bobsled thereafter. _We have enemies everywhere,_ Croce had said, staring into Pietro's eyes. Section One's institutional contempt for their brethren in Section Two was reciprocated, it seemed, right down to the cyborgs. Pietro had felt a need to be extra charming in the face of Triela's initial hostility.

But, mainly, he simply liked her. Opening the door and seeing one of Section Two's killing machines sewing a ribbon on a teddy bear while humming Beethoven had set him on his heels. He'd thought of his niece, about the same age and on whom he doted, and had found himself making comparisons. Triela was bright, outgoing, and opinionated, completely different from Rico. After meeting the spunky little blonde, he couldn't think of her as anything but a girl – a rather different girl, but still a girl.

"Well …" He shrugged. "What do you think? Do we have a friend here?"

"I can't be sure. But she did sort of invite you back, didn't she?"

They walked down the colonnade towards the parking area. Section Two certainly had a pretty headquarters, he reflected; it made Section One's office building in the suburbs look like a warehouse. "As if we'll ever set foot on the grounds again. But … I noticed a land line in her room. What do you think of our chances of getting the number?"

"What do you think of the chances any land line out of here doesn't connect through a switchboard?"

"I suppose you're right." He got into the car.

Elle slipped in beside him and shut the door. She smiled and showed him a page from her book, on which a telephone number was written. She said in a low voice, "I left my phone on her dresser. You should call while she's still alone, before she finds it and thinks of turning it in."

-0-

With a click of his mouse button, Hilshire brought up his dorm-room computer's video app and called up a list of contents of the disk he'd inserted. He selected the first session, and settled back in his chair as the monitor lit with the image of Bianchi's office as viewed through the observation room. _"Session number one," _Bianchi said in voice-over,_ "three days post-op."_

Elsa sat primly in the chair across from Bianchi's desk, hands resting loosely in her lap. She wore the long shirt, skirt, and leggings which, Hilshire now knew, were her only clothing. The image ended at her knees, but he didn't need to see her feet to know they didn't reach the floor.

"_How are you feeling?"_

"_Okay. Kind of heavy when I'm not moving. A little clumsy."_ Hilshire recognized the effects of conditioning drugs in her vague, dreamy voice and her blank eyes.

"_That will pass. Aside from the physical, how do you feel? It's okay to have questions. Everyone does."_

"_I don't need to ask any questions. Lauro tells me everything."_

"_Session two. One month post-op. Subject appears more animated and alert than at last session."_

Hilshire blinked. The girl in the video was Elsa, but he had never seen her like this. Dimples flashed when she spoke, her eyes were bright and expressive, and she punctuated her sentences with her hands, as a normal girl would but the cyborgs seldom did. Could the washed-out little creature who dogged Lauro's heels ever have been so… alive? _She almost reminds me of Henrietta._

"_He's taking me everywhere," _she said. _"We talk all the time, and he tells me all sorts of things. Today, he told me his last name, and he said now it was mine too."_

"_He gave you his name?" _Bianchi's voice. _"That was very nice."_

"_He says that I'm his now. He says we'll be together forever. Is that true?" _Spoken in a tone of desperate hope.

"_Well, yes, Elsa. Until one of you dies, at least."_

"_Lauro won't die." _The conviction of religious faith was in her voice._ "Not ever."_

"_Session three, five weeks post-op." _On the voice-over, Hilshire heard Bianchi take a breath, as if to say something else, but only a moment of silence followed before the sound switched to the inside of the doctor's office.

"_Elsa," _Bianchisaid,_ "you seem troubled today. Is something wrong?"_

Elsa sat with her hands pressed between her knees. _"I don't know. I think I must have done something, but I don't know what. Lauro…"_She trailed off, staring at Bianchi's desk.

"_Did something happen when you were working?"_

"_No." _She straightened. _"I'm sure he'd tell me that. But we're not…" _Her eyes dropped again. _"I miss him."_

"_Elsa, he leaves the compound with you every other day. The two of you are together more than most."_

"_No," _she said. _"We're not together."_

"_Session four," _Bianchi said matter-of-factly; to Hilshire, he almost sounded angry about something. _"Subject displaying crushed affect and other behaviors consistent with overconditioning, although there have been no changes to her drug regimen since the last session, and blood tests report nominal."_

Through the whole voice-over, Elsa sat staring straight ahead, arms folded in her lap. Just as Bianchi finished, she spoke: _"I don't think we have anything more to talk about. Lauro doesn't have any complaints about my performance, does he? And I'm not sick. I feel fine. Can I please leave?"_

"_Elsa, I can tell something's bothering you."_

"_I don't want to be here. I want to be on the training ground. Lauro is coming for me this afternoon. I need to stay sharp."_

There were six more sessions recorded on the disk. None of them was substantially different from the fourth. Elsa's behavior ranged from merely uncommunicative to hostile; she never spoke of her feelings or divulged any personal details about herself or her handler, and pestered endlessly to be released. Hilshire noted the tone of Bianchi's added comments at the start of each: terse, sparse, un-insightful, seeming to just be going through the motions. He wondered if the comments in Session Four showed compassion or just the frustration of a scientist whose experiment had gone awry. He decided to have a talk with the good doctor when he returned the disk.

-0-

Pietro walked, deep in thought, down the empty corridor towards his car, at the conclusion of his second – and probably last – visit to Section Two. It was just dark, which suited his mood; he had a lot to think about. He'd just met with Jean Croce, who'd tied up the case of Lauro de Sica's murder and presented it to him with a ribbon around it, just twelve hours after the bodies had been discovered. The story was simple and plausible, and Pietro didn't buy it, mostly because of Croce's attitude and body language, as if daring Pietro to call him a liar. The chief handler had insisted, once again, that de Sica's cyborg had sacrificed herself in a futile attempt to protect him. That was when Pietro had noticed Rico, sitting beside her handler, staring out the darkened window as if bored – or uncomfortable. He remembered how _very_ effective she'd been at protecting her handler from a surprise attack on the very same spot. He'd asked her for her opinion on whether she'd be happy to die for her handler, only to have Croce bull in and answer for her. Intrigued, he'd risked the chief handler's anger to ask her again. But Rico, cued by her handler's bald assertion that the cyborgs had no free will in the matter, had said, "Jean is my handler. If he says it, it's true."

Pietro Fermi had announced an end to Section One's investigation, but he was far from satisfied. He just didn't see any way to move the investigation any further. The only person here who would talk to him candidly was Triela, and she'd already told him what she knew. Besides, he didn't want to draw attention to her; she still had Eleanora's phone, and might be a useful resource in the future.

At a crossing of corridors, the faint echoing sound of a piano down the cross corridor intruded on his thoughts. The player was no virtuoso, he thought, though the melody was pleasant enough to listen to. It sounded like something a talented child might play for practice…

There was only one sort of child to be found at Section Two.

He turned down the other corridor, following the sound until he reached a closed door, through which he could hear the music clearly. He opened it quietly, and found Claes sitting at a baby grand in front of a big darkened window, eyes closed, fingers fluttering over the keys.

She sensed his presence somehow, and opened her eyes. The tune faltered and stopped. She appraised him with the same hawk's stare she had this morning, but made no move to leave.

"That was very pretty," he said. "'Greensleeves,' wasn't it?"

Her stare didn't change. "Is there something?"

_What an odd way to phrase the question, _he thought, _leaving it up to you to finish it. Something I can do for you? Something you need? Something wrong? _It was a supremely cautious response, he realized, acknowledging his presence and inquiring after his business without offer or invitation. "When you left the room this morning, I assumed it was because we were from Section One. Then Triela told us you'd lost your handler, and I thought talking about Lauro made you uncomfortable." He paused, but the little cyborg didn't take the opportunity to comment, just kept watching him from behind her glasses. "But then, I thought about it a little more. And it occurred to me that you might have been uncomfortable for another reason. There are things I'd like to know about fratello relationships, but the handlers won't talk to a Section One man about it, and I'm not sure how much trust to put in the other girls' observations. I think a cyborg without a handler to protect might offer me a very different point of view."

"An outsider's view," she said edgily.

"An objective view," he countered. "I already have an outsider's view, and it's not very flattering. I'd appreciate a chance to learn better." He approached and laid a hand on the piano's side rail. "I've closed my Section's investigation," he said quietly. "I'm asking just for me."

Something changed. She still watched him intently, but her gaze was different; whatever she was looking for in his face and posture, it wasn't signs of threat or weakness anymore. Finally, she said, "I wonder if you'd make a good handler."

Pietro resisted the urge to straighten his tie. Something in this girl's tone, and the way she appraised him from behind her lenses, made him a bit uncomfortable, as if she'd made an improper suggestion – improper for a girl her age, at least. "Why do you say that?"

She glanced down at the keyboard and touched a few keys. "You're dedicated, for one. You're still here, hours past the end of the workday, because what you do is important to you."

"Well, Mr. Croce is still working, too."

"He doesn't have anywhere else to go." She struck a few chords. "And you know how to talk to people. And you like kids, I think."

She was making up her mind about him, he realized. He stood beside the piano, silent, afraid to speak to this strange girl and queer his chances with her.

She began to play, low, slow, and soft. "I spend all my time at the Agency, mostly with the medical staff. They're not nearly as security-conscious as the field agents. They forget about my hearing, too, maybe because I never remark to them on what I hear. And sometimes they assume I know things I don't. I look and listen and keep quiet about what I learn."

_Claes is smart. She knows everything._ "Such as?"

She stopped playing. "Do you really have questions?"

"Would a cyborg die to protect her handler?"

She seemed surprised by the question. "Every one of them."

"So it's true?" He pressed. "Every one of them would be happy to die for her handler?"

"Only someone sick or insane could be 'happy' to die." She turned back to her keyboard. "It's just that, if one of them let her handler be killed, she couldn't live with herself afterwards."

"Conditioning," he said, nodding.

She shrugged and resumed her tune. "Or love. Does it really matter?"

"Doesn't it?"

"We have the life we have, Mr. Fermi."

She switched to another tune, something he didn't recognize. He listened to her play for awhile, then said, "It doesn't seem the same for all of you."

"No. Some of us have had more conditioning, some less."

He nodded. "That explains."

"Explains."

"The differences. It's easy to tell you and Triela aren't conditioned as much as Rico."

She stopped playing, but didn't look his way. "Actually, Mr. Fermi, Rico is the least conditioned of any of us."

Pietro felt the skin between his brows wrinkle. "That can't be right."

"The doctors overdosed Angelica. She was first. Rico was second, and they swung the other way. But she has a very high rejection threshold, so it didn't matter. And Jean doesn't up the dosage, because he's satisfied with her performance. But she's the only one of us who still has all her memories. She remembers her life before the Agency, her family, everything." The girl offered him a crooked little smile. "She told me the name her parents gave her once, but I forgot." She began to play again.

"But she seems so …"

"Only around Jean, or on his business. Anywhen else, she's a butterfly chaser."

"Then why does she put on such an act?"

"It's not an act, around Jean."

"I don't understand."

"No." She slowed the song until she was only touching the keys every couple of seconds or so. "You don't. But if you did, you'd understand a lot more. Maybe everything." She seemed to be gathering her thoughts; Pietro waited. "The handler defines the relationship, but he doesn't build it alone. We're all about seeking approval, after all. When the other girls are with their handlers, the first thought on their minds is, 'What does he want me to be?' If he's a man who's lost his whole family to an RF bomb, maybe he wants a surrogate little sister. So Henrietta will always be a little girl for Jose, no matter how long they're together. But Jose's brother is a different man. Faced with the same tragedy, he feels nothing can give back what he's lost, and what he wants is revenge instead."

"So… he wants a tool, a perfect killing machine."

She nodded. "Rico is probably the best rifle shot in the Agency, and pretty good with a pistol too. She's quick and agile and skilled in hand-to-hand. And she obeys Jean without hesitation."

"So I've seen." He thought about Claes's roommate, with her businesslike clothes and her teddy bears. "What about Triela's handler? What does he want?"

She thought, and shrugged. "Hilshire? Sometimes, it seems like he wants a partner. Other times … A daughter, I think. I don't know." She stopped. "That was the trouble between Lauro and Elsa. No matter how hard she tried, she could never be what Lauro wanted, because he could never decide what he wanted her to be."

Two hours later, Pietro was in Draghi's office; the chief of Section One kept odd hours as well, especially with the staging of the big operation in Milan. The investigator watched his boss finish the very brief report and set it on his desk. Draghi said, "I can tell you're not happy with this."

"I wish we'd gotten there before they started cleaning up the scene, especially the bodies," Pietro said. "The report Section Two gave me is pretty short on data." He thought about the sketchy forensics report given him by Jean Croce. How could their lab lose the bullets that had killed the two agents?

"And long on conclusion, which makes you wonder which came first." The Director slid the papers aside and picked up his espresso. "You did as well as could be expected. You embarrassed our cousins a bit, and cast some doubts on their use of cyborgs in the field, which may be useful later. Is there anything you want to tell me outside of the official report?"

He hesitated. "I spoke with a number of the cyborgs."

"And?"

"It's … hard not to feel sympathetic." He waited for the Director's face to cloud up.

Instead, Draghi nodded. "Understandable. They're fashioned in the likeness of children, after all. Just think of one of those tasteless horror movies where the hero's loved one is bitten by a vampire or some such. The physical form is there, but the soul is gone, and all that's left is something that needs a wooden stake driven through its heart." He paused. "How did de Sica get along over there? What did they think of him?"

Pietro frowned, wondering what Draghi was getting at. "Well, I got the impression they liked his work."

Draghi's eyes hooded. "Did he have any friends?"

"I didn't speak to any handlers except the boss one, Jean Croce. He seemed to have a professional respect for our man, but I got the feeling Lauro de Sica didn't have any friends over there."

From a desk drawer, Draghi drew out his sampler of Godivas and drummed his fingers on the lid. "Any enemies?"

The investigator blinked. Everyone at Section One knew what that little box of chocolates signified. Tomasso Draghi had once been nearly a hundred kilograms overweight. When his doctor had warned him to get back in shape before his health suffered, the Director had worked the weight down with the same focus and determination he showed all his causes. But he still indulged in his Godivas from time to time, when he was especially worked up about something. This was the second time Pietro had seen the box out of its desk drawer today. "Chief … what are you not telling me?"

Draghi sighed and put the box away unopened. "S2 is a little like the Mafia. Once you're in, you don't quit. If they suspected, say, that de Sica had turned _pentito_…"

Pietro remembered the hard look on Croce's face as he'd stood over the bloodstained ground where Lauro de Sica had fallen. _We have enemies everywhere._

Back at his desk, Pietro began putting his things away and locking up for the night while he thought about Draghi's remarks. It wasn't hard to figure out that Lauro had been in contact of some sort with his old boss, possibly passing information – betraying the trust of a very secretive semi-legal organization that routinely killed people.

_Anyone who wanted to kill Lauro would have had to kill Elsa first. But then, how had the killer taken Lauro by surprise? They must have been killed at the same time. So, a team. The ones Croce tagged? Would Elsa have allowed a pair of strangers, let alone a pair of known RF assassins, get close enough to take her down?_

_Croce said she fired two shots. She wouldn't have been able to do that if she'd been taken by surprise. But there's no proof but the chief handler's word that she did. They never found the bullets, and we never got a look at Elsa's gun. Misdirection?_

"Well," Eleanora said behind him, "what are you doing here so late? Don't you ever go home?"

"Look who's talking." He slammed his file drawer and locked it. "Don't you have someone waiting for you at home?"

Eleanora and he had been working together for three months; she'd been one of a handful of new arrivals from Public Safety, the SWA's planning and intelligence-gathering arm. He'd come to appreciate her early on: she was easy to get along with, resourceful and well-connected back at Public Safety, a tireless worker, and always willing to go the extra mile on a case. She had a tendency to hover, which seemed not unusual to him in a rookie learning the ropes from an old hand, but, in this male-dominated environment, it had engendered a few rumors he'd had difficulty putting down. It didn't help that she was easy on the eyes, he supposed. It occurred to him that, although they'd spoken a great deal about their families – she had about a million relatives in Campania - he didn't know if Elle had a boyfriend.

She thumbed through a thin stack of folders on her arm and dropped them on his desk. "No more than you, apparently. I was just on my way out the door, and I'm starving. Would you like to stop someplace?"

"I'm not sure. I-"

His desk phone rang. The call ID displayed Eleanora's cell phone number. He picked up. "Yes?"

"_The battery is almost dead, so I thought I might as well use it. Did I wake you up?_"

He caught Eleanora's eye. "Triela. Good to hear from you. No, I'm still working. I was at Section Two earlier, and I thought of dropping by, but …"

"_Just as well. I wasn't here anyway. Besides, all the handlers are so edgy right now, you'd think they were clearing a Padania armory. And I think you're the reason._" A moment later, he heard a squeak that he thought might be her window opening. "_Whew. Better. I could use a little fresh air. And a bath. And nine hours' sleep._"

He smiled into the phone. "Rough day?"

"_Rough week. Joint mission with Jean and Rico. We're traveling all over Campania by day and coming back to the Agency at dark. The only reason we were here this morning was because the Director heard about Lauro and Elsa and wanted Jean close by. You know, I think I might even skip my bath and fall into bed."_

"Where's Claes?"

"_In her library, I suppose. Sometimes she spends the night in there, just drops her face into a book and doesn't come up for air till morning._"

"You two seem so different. Do you get along as roommates?"

"_I hardly know she's here half the time. What's your interest in Claes?_"

"Oh," he said offhand, "I'd just like to know all of you better. I came to Section Two with a lot of wrong assumptions, you know. I'm frankly baffled by the way you girls deal with your handlers."

"_Deal with them?_"

He shrugged into the phone. "If there's another way to describe it, I don't know it." He thought about Claes's description of three very different fratelli, one of which he hadn't met. "How do Jose and Henrietta get along?"

"_With each other? You'd have to see it to believe. And Jose and Henrietta are charmers, they can get along with anybody. They're the only team Lauro and Elsa ever worked with. That should tell you something._"

A tiny alarm bell went off in the back of his mind. "It does. They worked together often?"

"_Not really, but they did a mission together in Siena just a few days ago. Gone for a day and a night._"

The alarm sounded a little louder. Far from the office, might Lauro have confided in his fellow handler? Tried to recruit him? Or just let something slip? And a day or so later, de Sica and his cyborg bodyguard were expertly taken down. _Who better to take out a cyborg assassin team than another cyborg assassin team?_ "Sounds to me like Jose and Henrietta could tell me a thing or two … about how fratello relationships work."

"_They might, if they were around. But about now they're in Naples."_

"Is that right?" He shifted the phone to his other shoulder. "Are they coming back tonight?"

"_Hardly. They're on their way to Sicily."_


	12. Closing In on the Truth

PLUS TWO

Jose sat in the ferry's passenger compartment and watched through the porthole as the darkness lifted, revealing the brightening sea and sky. The seat under him vibrated faintly as the ship's engines powered down, slowing it for its passage through the busy Strait of Messina. Land drifted into view, a town sprouting from a modest slope running straight into the sea. They would be traveling aboard the ferry for some time yet: the ship would cruise past Taormina, the little resort town that was their final destination, and Mount Aetna as well, until they reached the port of Catania, where Ferro would pick them up for the drive back. He took a deep breath, filling himself with memories.

Beside him, Henrietta sat sleeping with her head resting on his upper arm. She stirred slightly and settled into sleep again. He was dismayed to see a tear leak from the inside corner of her eye and run down her cheek to disappear between her lips. What bothered him most about it was that he couldn't know what it signified.

Last night, as the ship had prepared to depart from Naples, he'd received a startling reminder not to make assumptions of any sort regarding his little 'sister'. He'd tried to break the news to Henrietta about Lauro and Elsa's deaths one at a time, to spare her. Instead, he'd bumped his nose hard into the cyborg attitude toward death. When Henrietta had learned Elsa was dead, she'd asked anxiously about Lauro. Jose, moved by her show of sympathy, had reluctantly told her that Elsa's handler was dead as well.

"Good," she'd said brightly, her relief plain. "At least they're together. That way she won't be lonely."

Jose knew that the girls had a casual attitude about death, of course – as regarded anyone but their handlers, at least – but he had always thought that the girls were simply inured to the death of their targets and enemies like good little soldiers, their child's sensibilities initially blunted by their conditioning. But he'd learned different last night. Killing someone, in a cyborg's mind at least, didn't end them forever; it was more like removing a piece from a game board, or sending a player to the locker room, someplace they simply couldn't be reached and from which they couldn't do any harm. It explained why the girls sometimes seemed more reluctant to hurt someone's feelings than to take his life. He gazed down at her and gave a tiny sigh. Even though none of the girls had any religious instruction – Agency personnel were forbidden to discuss the topic with them, in fact – it seemed they had a strong belief in some sort of afterlife.

_And why not? _He asked himself. _Maybe they could teach the rest of us a thing or two about life after death; they have direct experience, after all._

Jose watched the big island slide by, its coastline getting steeper and rougher as they moved south. His thoughts returned to Lauro and Elsa's end. Jean's explanation of events had seemed very thin; he'd never had any talent for lying convincingly, at least not to his brother. All night, Jose had been puzzling over Jean's account of the expert way Elsa had been taken down, and what his brother might have left out. Who would know how to kill a cyborg so effortlessly, and how could such an adversary get close enough to Elsa to do the deed? How could she have been so distracted? It just didn't add up.

_Now they're together. She won't be lonely._

Lauro's treatment of Elsa in the tower had plainly crushed her; when they'd left her behind, Jose had had a dark feeling that, before they reached the bottom of the stairs, he might hear a commotion from the crowd in the plaza, followed by a thud. But if Elsa had feared being alone more than death…

An image formed in his mind: Lauro leading Elsa through the park on some errand that turns out to be a setup. A shot from a sniper's rifle – the Padania were fond of gestures, and would regard such an attack as fitting revenge after the hit on the police chief – and Lauro falls dead before Elsa can even know her handler is in danger. She stares at his body for a few moments, then, instead of lapsing into catatonia like Claes, she draws her sidearm, points it at her eye, and quickly joins him.

He looked down at the child sleeping snuggled up to his side, and thought he understood. Henrietta stirred against him again; another tear jeweled her cheek. Jose decided she'd slept long enough. "Henrietta."

-0-

Eleanora stepped out of the bed-and-breakfast's front door, squinted in the morning sunshine, and walked to Pietro's car idling at the curb. She got in, and he pulled away without waiting for her to buckle up. She fastened the belt as he accelerated down the road, headed for State Road 18. "When you said you had to check something out, I didn't expect to be traveling half the length of Italy to do it. Why couldn't we pack a bag at least?"

"Sorry. I thought we could catch them in Naples." No such luck; the cruise-ship-sized ferry had been just a string of lights on the horizon when they'd arrived at the dock. From there, he'd driven through half the night to Scilla, a small resort town not far from the toe of the Italian boot, and spent a short night. The Strait of Messina was practically a stone's throw away, and he expected to take ship from there to the ferry's destination, the port city of Catania in Sicily. He hoped to meet Jose Croce and Henrietta as they disembarked, since he didn't know where they were staying. "At least you got dinner out of it."

"I think I might have preferred a change of clothes."

"The east coast of Sicily is a tourist trap, I hear. I'm sure we can get outfitted there if we stay overnight."

"Pietro, why are we doing this? What's so special about this team?"

"They may have been the last members of Section Two to see Lauro and Elsa alive. I want to talk to them." _And I want to know why they took a sudden vacation so far from Rome._ Sicily was a traditional spot for Mafiosi to go 'cool off' after a hit; the close-mouthed populace was notoriously uncooperative towards the police, and it was an easy place to get lost for awhile. If S2 wanted them out of the way while the investigation wound down, it would be a perfect destination.

He turned onto the old coastal road, a narrow two-lane that hugged the mountainsides a hundred meters above the sea, and headed southwest. He negotiated the winding road at a speed that might have made a passenger nervous, especially in his little beater, but Elle sat quietly beside him, letting him concentrate on his driving.

But his driving was occupying only part of his attention. He was thinking about yesterday's meeting with Piero Lorenzo, Chief of Section Two. He'd just left Claes, still playing, in the little conservatory and headed back to his car. In the half-empty lot, lit by fixtures high on the surrounding walls, he'd noted once again how his little Renault looked like a scrapyard escapee among the expensive vehicles belonging to the Section Two staff. His key had been in his hand when a woman's voice had called from the opening to the lot. "Mr. Fermi?"

He'd turned to see a dark-haired woman of early middle age looking his way from gloom of the big archway. "Yes."

"If you have the time, Director Lorenzo would like to see you before you go."

As if he could turn down an opportunity to come face-to-face with the man who ran this madhouse. "Lead the way, Miss…?"

"Petrelli." Her manner had been cool, but businesslike rather than hostile. "Call me Ferro."

As she led him down a maze of hallways into a part of the complex he'd never been, he'd studied Lorenzo's girl Friday, if that was what she was. Ferro's dress and shoes were expensive, but conservative and sensible, the sort of clothing a woman could wear anywhere, and would last forever without going out of style. Her hairstyle was short and probably easy to take care of. She wore a minimum of makeup, and no jewelry, not even earrings. Pietro got the impression she wasn't the sort to be interested in an office romance, and intended to be taken seriously by her male colleagues. He'd asked, "What's your position here, Ferro?"

"I have various support duties with the cyborg teams," she'd said, as they'd turned a corner into a corridor whose walls were wainscoted with thick wood panels and hung with fine art. "Whatever they need to function effectively and get the job done. Here we are." She'd stopped at a heavy-looking door, knocked, then swung it open. "Right this way."

They'd entered an anteroom with a small desk: a receptionist's office, deserted at this hour – unless it was Ferro's. The door on the opposite wall had been open, and Pietro could see a gray-haired man at a wide desk, who'd glanced up as the outer door opened.

"Sir," Ferro had said, "Agent Fermi." She'd backed out of the room and shut the door.

Pietro and Lorenzo had settled into comfortable chairs across a low wooden table. The Chief of Section Two had taken off his glasses and polished them with a handkerchief. "Terrible business, this. You can be sure we'll turn over every stone until we find those two."

"I'm sure Director Draghi would like to keep an eye out for them too. What are their names?"

"Names?"

"Mr. Croce said the perps were known RF agents. He seemed quite familiar with them and their work. I assume you have names for them."

"Just code names, I'm afraid. They're quite elusive." Lorenzo had settled his glasses back on his face. "I'll send one of my people over with a complete dossier, everything we have on them." He'd leaned back in the big padded chair. "So. You've gotten a closer look at our operation and our people than most in your Section. I hope you've gotten a favorable impression of us."

Pietro had thought of Claes and Triela and Rico. "On balance, yes."

"Favorable enough to consider a transfer?"

Taken completely back, all he could think to say was, "What?"

"Lauro de Sica was a good man and a valuable asset. But I won't pretend that was the first reason I invited him to join us. I'd like to welcome another Section One man to our ranks as soon as possible. And my chief handler was most impressed with you." He'd leaned forward over the table. "You needn't worry about being assigned a cyborg. Most of our agents aren't handlers, and have duties very like what you're used to. You'd scarcely notice you'd transferred." He'd offered Pietro a little smile. "Except that you could afford a different car."

"This is a very generous offer, Director. But very unexpected. I'd need to think it over."

"Perfectly understandable. But I'd appreciate it if you'd keep it to yourself." He'd offered Pietro a small smile. "If you turn us down, I wouldn't want the next fellow I ask to think he was second choice." He stood and turned towards the door.

Pietro stood as well. "Just for the sake of discussion, if I were to accept, I wouldn't be entirely averse to being assigned a cyborg."

Lorenzo had paused. "Really."

Just to see what the man would say, Pietro had said, "Yes. I understand Claes is available."

The Director had shaken his head, just a single short movement left and right. "You're mistaken. Cyborgs are always assigned handlers right after their initial conditioning, during the earliest part of their training. Claes lost her handler in a car accident, and no one knows what it would take to imprint another one on her; it may be impossible without emptying her mind. We're not prepared to risk her unnecessarily, especially not while she's so useful in her present capacity. She's on an extended assignment, working as a test bed for our medical research department. It's vital work, but a handler would … be superfluous. But we have a number of other candidates, if you're interested."

"Thank you." Pietro had nodded. "I'll definitely think it over. But if someone else suitable comes along, don't hold it open for me."

Lorenzo had nodded, reading Pietro's real answer behind the diplomatic words. He'd offered his hand in farewell. "We're not just a bunch of government assassins armed with cybernetic murder machines, Mr. Fermi. We're trying to make the world a better place."

Pietro had taken Lorenzo's hand and shaken it. "I believe that's true, sir." _But I'm not sure I'd want to live in your vision of a better world._

"Pietro," Elle said, "are we trying to get to the ferry landing or the morgue?"

He snapped out of his reverie, suddenly aware that the little car's tires had cried out on the last curve. He looked down at the speedometer and saw that he was traveling at nearly twenty kilometers per hour past the posted speed. He eased down, though still somewhat above the limit. "Sorry."

It had been clear from the beginning that his intrusion into the affairs of Section Two had made that secretive organization's leaders very uneasy. Until he'd spoken to Draghi tonight, Pietro had thought Lorenzo's job offer a bribe of sorts. Now, he wondered if the Director of Section Two had tried to induct him into S2's ranks as a way to silence him.

_S2 is a little like the Mafia. Once you're in, you don't quit._

"Eleanora, do you know if we can get the car across to the island?"

"Let's see." She produced her notebook and examined the bookmark tabs fixed to its top, then opened it. "Yes. The ferry from Reggio di Calabria to Catania carries cars."

He smiled. "You're amazing. I'm starting to wonder how I ever got along without you."

Looking pleased, she said, "And, if you're interested, we're on the same road the Romans traveled when they went to war against the Greeks in Sicily."

"You don't have the color of my boxers in that notebook, do you?"

She raised her eyebrows and very deliberately turned to the very back of the book. Pietro's hands tightened on the wheel. _Don't be ridiculous. She's playing with you._ He relaxed just as she said, "I'm afraid not. You'll have to come up with that one for yourself." The corners of her mouth turned up. "Assuming, of course, you're wearing any."

He shrugged and returned his attention to the view through the windshield, feeling the weight of his pistol in its hip holster. He might have to play this visit very carefully, in order to get his answers without inciting a confrontation. He was sure he and Elle would be no match for Jose Croce and his 'girl', should the situation get out of hand; Elle didn't even carry. He determined to keep the interview light and seeming of no great importance, just a little chat as an excuse for an unofficial holiday.

A short time later, he stood at the empty ferry landing, staring glumly out over the water at a passing cruise ship. "Them, I suppose."

"I'm afraid so," Elle said.

They'd arrived at the ferry line in plenty of time to make the passage to Catania, and, from there, intercept the Naples-Catania ferry. But there'd been no traffic in the ferry line's lot; they'd learned that the Catania ferry was broken down and out of service, probably until next day. The dock master suggested they double back to Villa San Giovanni and take the ferry to Messina. But by then their quarry's ferry would be docked and they'd be gone. "_Merda_. Should've driven straight through and taken lodging on the island. I'll never catch up with them now. They could be anywhere."

"Pietro," Elle said, "let me borrow your phone."

He passed it to her absently as he stared out over the water, imagining the scene: a meet between Lauro and Jose, late at night and far from the Agency. Whose idea? It could plausibly have been either's, and it didn't really matter. Elsa would let Henrietta and her handler close, surely. In his mind's eye, Pietro saw Jose Croce as a twin to his hard-edged brother, more open-seeming, perhaps, but just as cold inside; Henrietta appeared as a cross between Triela and Rico, a young beauty just this side of puberty whose sweet face masked the mind of a conscienceless killer. He imagined Jose diverting Lauro's attention for a moment as he stepped behind him and drew his pistol, and Elsa reaching for her weapon an instant too late as Henrietta's bullet pierced her eye.

Elle handed back his phone. "They're in Taormina," she said. "The family has a place there. I've written down the address." At his look she said, "It's a matter of public record, Pietro. What, did you think they were hiding or something?"

-0-

"Jean calls them 'hunting dogs'," Bianchi said from his office chair, ignoring the DVD in its clear case which lay on the desk between him and Hilshire. "An apt term, if you consider only their function, and how they relate to their handlers." He held up a hand. "I know it's different with you and Triela. But look at the others, and you'll see what I mean. They're useful extensions of their handlers' will, with enhanced senses and mobility and a limited range of independent responses, at least when they're working." When Hilshire grudged a nod, he went on, "Now, imagine if your hunting dog started walking around on its hind legs and reading the newspaper. You might wonder what it would do next – and how long it would continue obeying your commands." He fanned the air with the DVD case in his hand. "I've known a lot of people with dogs. They bond with them, even love them after a fashion. Most of them have told me the dog thinks it's human. None of them have ever said _they_ think the dog is human."

Hilshire thought of the album and felt anger rise, no matter that the feeling was directed at a dead man. "That's it? The more she behaved like a real girl, the less he wanted to do with her?"

"He was from Section One, after all. Those people think our cyborgs are just disgusting creations we build in a workshop. It must have been a shock for him the first time, to see his 'puppet' lying stuck full of tubes in a hospital bed, looking like a sick little girl instead of a contraption on a workbench." A light on Bianchi's desk phone began to blink; he ignored it. "I could fill your head with theories about the Other, and acceptance issues, and Masahiro Mori and his 'uncanny valley', but you wouldn't understand any better than you do now, I think. I don't. Armchair analysis? He was falling in love with her. For reasons we may never know, he despised himself for that. He tried to purge his self-hatred by transferring it to Elsa. Classic abuse profile."

"Abuse? He-"

"I doubt he ever touched her, Victor. But there are other ways to hurt a child. Sometimes you just injure her soul."

"Doctor. Do you think Elsa had a soul?"

"I'm not sure I have a soul. I was just speaking metaphorically." Bianchi leaned back in his chair. "He wasn't an insensitive man, appearances to the contrary. He seemed to have some sympathy for her at first before his biases reasserted. He returned my file on her, and refused a copy I offered him. I think one reading was all his conscience allowed."

"How do _you_ feel about it, Doctor? How does the way we treat these children sit with your professional ethics?"

"You mean, 'first, do no harm,' all of that?" Bianchi shook his head. "You've seen Triela's file."

Hilshire had done a great deal more than just see the file, but the doctor didn't know that. He nodded.

"These girls' histories are all the same. If the Agency hadn't taken them in, then Angelica, Rico, and Triela would still be confined to bed or a wheelchair and connected to life support, unless the courts gave permission to disconnect them. Henrietta would likely have found a way to kill herself by now. Claes and Elsa would be dead…" The doctor's voice trailed off as he remembered that one of them was. Then he went on, "All their lives were over before they came here. They got a reprieve, free of constant pain or any other handicap. They're advancing prosthetic research by leaps and bounds. And other kinds of medical research as well."

"And they're handy to the politicians paying the bills," Hilshire said. "If only they weren't still so damned human." After a moment he said, "Why would Claes and Elsa be dead?"

"For Claes, it was leukemia. The treatments beat the cancer, finally, but they didn't leave much behind. She very nearly died during conditioning. Elsa…" The doctor's chin dipped. "She was beaten almost to death. The damage was too much to fix any other way but cyberization."

Hilshire tensed, thinking of the state in which he and Rachelle had found the child who would become his partner. "Assault?"

"No." Bianchi met Hilshire's eyes. "Parental abuse. Her father. A long pattern of it, judging by the old scars and healed breaks in the examiner's report that came with her. Her limbs were covered with bruises and burns as well. His preferred punishment for God-knows-what transgression was to apply a lighted cigarette to her. Even with Lauro, she was better off. Especially in the beginning."

"But…"

"But, when Lauro turned cold to her, she rapidly adopted the habits and attitudes of a long-abused child, even though she had no memory of her former life." Bianchi nodded and held his eyes. "Abused children often cling to an abusive parent, strange as that may seem. They think they're responsible somehow, that, if they were 'better', the abuse would stop and the parent would love them. The abuser's love and hate for his victim are reflected back to him." He stood. "We've begun to revise our ideas about how the conditioning drugs affect memory. Not much that disappears is actually erased. The strongest memories, the ones with the most emotional content attached, seem to just get pushed down out of reach in the unconscious mind, where they still color the subject's perceptions. It's the only explanation for some of the girls' behaviors." In a lower voice he said, "It may have something to do with the tears at night as well, but I'm getting a lot of resistance from my colleagues about that theory– skepticism or denial, I can't be sure which."

The doctor returned the DVD case to the cabinet. "I told myself I wouldn't say it again, but you really should view a few of Triela's sessions. I think every handler should see his cyborg in an unguarded moment, a moment when she isn't trying to accommodate him. You really can't understand them until you do. The others might profit from getting rid of an assumption or two. But for you, Victor, I made the offer to dispel your doubts. She's happy with you, you know. And with herself. She understands that this life is a gift, and accepts the limitations and tradeoffs. In fact, she takes a certain … professional pride in what she is and what she can do. That's not from conditioning. She's just a very centered and practical girl."

"I know all this. I don't need to pry into her secrets."

"Is that the reason?" Bianchi eyed him. "Or … are you afraid to learn what she knows?"


	13. Normal Girls

PLUS TWO

Pietro and Eleanora stood quietly in the gloom of a narrow passage just off the outdoor staircase which led to the top of the hill and the Croce family's summer retreat. Two Section Two agents had just passed down the steps, apparently from the house, and Pietro thought their conversation interesting. _'Protecting the cyborgs.' What the devil could that mean?_

Avoiding them had been a very near thing. Pietro had paused on the stairs to admire the view and trade a few words with Eleanora. He'd glanced up to the next landing just as a couple had descended the next flight of stairs and stepped onto it. The upper stairs had been at right angles to the ones Elle and Pietro were ascending, and Pietro had had just an instant to recognize Ferro's profile and pull his partner into the side passage before the two S2 agents had turned down the stairs.

The two Section One agents emerged from the side passage onto the stairs, watching the two S2 agents pass out of sight below. "Pietro," Elle said, "why are we hiding from our own?"

He considered how much to tell her. She knew the two Sections didn't get along, of course, but she seemed oblivious to the depth of that animosity, and didn't know about the backroom maneuvering by both sides to threaten and safeguard Section Two's existence. And he hadn't told her about his suspicions, now compounded by the discovery that Croce and his cyborg had been accompanied on their 'vacation' by a security team. "Just avoiding trouble," he said. "It comes in all shapes and sizes."

They reached the house, which sat almost at the top of the slope. The door was made of wooden planks dark with age, without a bell button or a peephole. Without seeming to, Pietro positioned himself so as to shield Eleanora when the door opened. He knocked, two firm raps, and waited. A moment later, he did it again.

"Maybe they're not home," Elle said.

_Maybe they're busy,_ he thought.

The door cracked open, just wide enough for someone inside to get a good look at them, and Pietro hung an open, friendly look on his face. He didn't see anyone in the opening at first, and then he looked down and saw the face of a little brown-haired girl, maybe ten or twelve, looking far from pleased. Belatedly, he remembered Claes's description of Jose's cyborg partner: _she'll always be a little girl for Jose_. _Another assumption shot to hell, _he thought_. Where has Draghi been getting his information? Surely Croce's not playing house with this child. _"Well, hello, there," he said in his friendliest voice as he put a hand around the door's edge.

Her right shoulder rolled, and his gun hand on the door twitched. Still smiling, he said quickly, "Please, don't go for your gun. We're from the Agency as well." No gun appeared, so he went on, "Triela told us all about you." He pushed the door open slightly. "I'm Pietro Fermi, and this is Eleanora Gabriella, from Section One."

A man's voice from inside the house said, "Section One, eh?" Its author appeared from another room and approached. The dark-haired man a few steps behind the girl didn't look much like his brother, Pietro decided, but, judging from voice and posture, their attitudes were similar enough.

Pietro put a little mirth in his voice, as if sharing a joke. "That's right, reporter-on-vacation."

"The vacation part's real enough. What do you want?"

The girl continued to scowl at them; Apparently, invoking the names of Triela and the Agency bought only so much tolerance. _They certainly aren't being charming right now._ But Pietro's suspicion weakened further. Would a pair of killers trying to avoid suspicion and appear innocent be so openly hostile? He didn't think so. "Nothing much. We're just tying up some loose ends in an investigation." He put a bit of appeal into his voice. "We've traveled a long way to talk with you. May we come in?"

Jose said reluctantly, "Sure. Come on in."

Pietro pushed at the part-open door, but it didn't budge.

"Henrietta," Jose said. The little cyborg let go of the door and stepped back. So, Pietro thought as he swung the door open, the cyborgs weren't just freakishly sensitive and fast; they were strong as quarry workers as well.

"But there are no guns allowed in this house," Jose said. "I'll take them." His face smoothed, looking suddenly mild, and he spread his arms wide. He said lightly, "We're on holiday. The smell of gun oil reminds us of things we came here to get away from."

Uneasily, Pietro slipped the fastenings on his holster, wrapped them around his pistol, and passed it over. Trying to hide his disquiet – at disarming, and at Jose's abrupt and disingenuous change of mood – he said, "What will you want next, my family jewels?"

With each man still gripping the pistol, Jose said in a harder voice, "Leave your mouth at the door, if you please." Then Pietro remembered the girl, standing almost between them. He glanced down at her, and was startled to see her staring at the pistol, as a hungry child might regard a favorite treat she was forbidden to eat. _In the doorway, her hand didn't come back empty because she changed her mind. My God. He really has brought her here on a holiday. Maybe she's the reason they're here, even. 'Protecting the cyborg.'_

"Forgive my bad manners," Pietro said quietly – to Henrietta. "I've followed you here and pushed my way into your house, intruding on your vacation. I've barely cleared the threshold before I start fouling the air with my mouth. The only excuse I can offer is that I'm not around kids much. I have a niece, but she's years older, and I'm not as careful around her as I should be; I'm sure her language is as coarse as mine when she's with her friends. Still, it was very rude of me. I'm sorry."

The little brunette glanced up at Jose, who seemed to be looking at Pietro with friendlier eyes. "It's okay. I don't feel right without my gun either."

The four of them settled into a pair of couches facing each other across a low table. The room was made light and airy by a pair of French doors opening onto a balcony that overlooked the sea. The doors were open, and a faint breeze stirred through the room as they talked, accompanied by the faint sound of the sea. Pietro noted that Jose seated his guests facing the opening, and him and his cyborg with their backs to it. _Letting us appreciate the view, or caution?_ There was, after all, the matter of Ferro and her companion – and their odd conversation – still unresolved.

"So," Jose said, "What sort of 'loose ends' are you here to tie up for Section One?"

"We're the investigators for the deaths of Lauro de Sica… and his cyborg, Elsa."

"I thought the case was closed."

"It is."

"So, you're just waiting to catch the ones who did this."

_If we do that, we'll be waiting forever. _"Officially, yes. But I'm not satisfied with the conclusion." He watched Jose carefully, and thought he saw a flicker. _He had nothing to do with Lauro and Elsa's death, but he knows something._ "Our boss didn't send us out here."

"Pietro," Elle said with a mixture of alarm and curiosity, "the Chief doesn't know we're here?"

"I told him I'm visiting a sick grandmother in Naples. Our visit here is more personal than business."

Jose said, "Then why did you follow us here?"

Pietro leaned forward. He'd been watching Henrietta as closely as Jose, and noticed how she walked a step behind him, how her eyes tracked him. He noted, too, how those brown eyes blanked and she became still when her handler was nearby but not interacting with her. It made him think of Rico, staring out windows when Jean was talking to someone else. It reminded him of something else, as well: a computer going into standby mode after a few minutes of inattention from its user. "Triela told me that if we had questions about fratello relationships, we should come to you." _And I do_, he thought, feeling the picture frame in the pocket of the coat beside him. _About one in particular._ He spoke in a tone that he hoped conveyed that he was sharing a confidence, not conducting an investigation.

Jose's eyes, like his brother's, were blue and very penetrating; he stared at Pietro, assessing his visitor. Finally, he said, "Henrietta. Will you fix dinner for everyone?"

"Okay." The little cyborg rose from her place beside him and headed into the kitchen.

Pietro smiled. "Really. She does housework too?"

Jose didn't. "She practices cooking in her dorm room. Don't expect anything tasty." His eyes flicked from the girl entering the kitchen doorway to Eleanora, and Pietro understood.

The Section One investigator said, with a little chuckle, half embarrassed and hoping she'd understand, "Eleanora?" _Please, don't take umbrage at being asked to do woman's work._

"Right. I'll go supervise." She got up and walked briskly to the kitchen.

Pietro turned his head to watch her go, and smiled. _Damn, she's not just smart, she's quick. What luck I got her instead of some peabrain like the Chief's nephew._ He returned his attention to Jose, wondering what the man might have to say that he didn't want his cyborg to hear. He also wondered whether Jose had silently asked for Eleanora to accompany her because he wanted someone to keep an eye on her or because he didn't want Elle to hear either. "She's certainly devoted. This 'conditioning' is very effective," he said, hoping to pry a reaction out of the handler.

"They're not just brainwashing drugs. That's a side effect. Every cyborg needs conditioning to be functional; without it, they'd reject their implants and die. Henrietta is no exception." He slumped behind his clasped hands, as if hiding. "But I don't increase her dosages to make her loyal. I don't force any of the devotion she has to me beyond what's instilled in her by a minimum of conditioning."

Pietro noted the lack of any mention of Jose's feelings for Henrietta in his little speech. But then he thought of Rico's statement about how Jose gave her 'lots of stuff', and this little holiday trip far from the Agency, with a pair of agents to provide security so Jose could disarm his little bodyguard and make it a real vacation. Unlike Lauro and Jean, he went out of his way to make his living weapon feel appreciated, at least. Pietro assumed a casual position on the couch, trying to rob his next words of any sting. "Tell me. What difference does that make? I mean, just because you don't do it as much doesn't really make it better."

Jose lowered his clasped hands to his knees, obviously upset, and looking like a man delivering a confession. "I know we're using these girls. But if they weren't useful to us, they wouldn't exist. I suppose that sounds thin and cold, but that's the way it is."

Elle and Henrietta appeared from the kitchen. The girl headed for the hooks by the door where the coats hung and pulled down a little jacket. Elle said, "Dinner will be slightly delayed. We're going to the market."

Pietro raised his eyebrows. "Do you want the keys?" This was an old part of the town; the narrow streets crowded with buildings had no room for parking. They'd left the little Renault half a kilometer away.

"Are you kidding? There's no lot at the market. The way parking is around here, the car would just double our walk time." She picked up her jacket and followed Henrietta out the door.

Jose watched the door shut. "Those two seem to have hit it off. What kind of questions is she asking, Pietro?"

"None that I supplied. I think she's just relieved that the cyborgs aren't all like Rico." He added carefully, "Or Elsa." Jose's reaction was slight, but Pietro had more skill at spotting such things than Jose had at hiding them. Pietro refilled his glass and took a deep swallow while he watched the Section Two agent wrestling with his thoughts.

Jose took a swallow from his glass as well. "It's a little strange, getting a lecture on the humane treatment of cyborgs from a guy from Section One."

"Well, from what you've told me, and what I've seen, I think you should train your handlers better before you put a cyborg in their keeping."

"Train?" Jose's mouth twisted. "The Agency likes to think it knows what it created when it made these girls. But it doesn't, really. That's why handlers have so much leeway with them – plenty of room for trial and error. We don't have any training. We're all groping in the dark." He sipped his drink. "It doesn't screen them either, not really. The list of applicants is too short. 'I see by your record that you're no stranger to violence, and you want a job here so bad you didn't ask any uncomfortable questions during the interview. You seem like just the sort of person we're looking for. Just sign all these security agreements, thank you. Congratulations, welcome to Section Two. Oh, by the way, do you like kids?'"

The door swung wide, and Eleanora entered without closing it, alone and short of breath. "Keys."

Pietro reached into his coat pocket. "What-"

"Later." She took the keys from his hand and waved Jose back into his seat. She left almost at a run, swinging the door shut behind her to bang into its stop.

-0-

Eleanora sent the little car rattling down the narrow twisting road in pursuit of the scooter-mounted purse-snatcher who'd buzzed by Henrietta and snatched her bag on the fly, knocking her down. She was also in pursuit of Henrietta, who'd taken off after the miscreant at a dead run as soon as she'd realized her purse was gone. Elle didn't really expect to overtake the thief, but she supposed she'd find a worn-out little girl hobbling down the road before too long. Fortunately, the road snaked back and forth down the mountainside without any turnoffs, so she was sure she hadn't missed either of them. She kept an eye out for side passages, but so far the only ones she'd seen were pedestrian routes with steep stairs. She didn't think a man who stole little girls' purses would choose so difficult a path unless he knew he was being pursued.

She entered a section where the roadway had been cut into the side of the slope, with a steep wall rising up on one side and a dropoff on the other. She approached a curve, slowing, and stamped hard on the brakes.

The thief's scooter lay on the pavement ahead. The rider, his back to her, seemed to be levitating ten centimeters off the ground, his hands at his throat. Then he squirmed, and Elle saw Henrietta lifting him off the ground by his collar.

Elle's breath hitched. _Enhancements._ But that wasn't the most alarming thing; it was Elle's suspicion about what was about to happen next. Thief and cyborg were two steps from a low wall separating the road from a seventy-degree slope; Eleanora was certain that, if she'd arrived just a minute later, she'd have seen Henrietta tossing the scooter over the wall to join its owner at the bottom, twenty meters below.

She opened the door and took a step out. "Police!" She called, as she produced her open notebook as if it was a badge. She was sure the man couldn't turn his head enough to see it clearly, but she made sure he saw her flip it shut. "Give this girl back her things."

Half an hour later, after shopping at a different market near the hotels along the shore, Elle and Henrietta were sitting on a seawall overlooking the beach. The girl's purse was in her lap, clasped loosely in both hands as if she thought it might be stolen again. "The camera Jose gave me was inside," she said. "I couldn't just let it go."

"Ah."

-0-

Dinner was a quiet affair, taken at a table in front of a pair of open French doors that gave them a view of the ocean and the reddening sky. They refrained from talking business, and actually spoke very little, aside from some polite comments about the food – bland, but passable -that brought a blush to Henrietta's face. Jose supposed that a stranger might have taken them all for a group of friends.

Eleanora took charge at the end of the meal, helping Henrietta clear the table and deliver the dishes to the sink. "You men can help by staying out of our way. Do you want coffee? I see you have grappa."

Jose shared a glance with Pietro. "No, thanks. I think we'll just finish what we opened this afternoon. Maybe you and Henrietta would like to take a walk before the sun's completely down."

"I think I've seen all the sights I care to for one day." She started running water into the sink. "But I'm sure the two of us can find something to do."

Jose and Pietro traded innocuous comments about Sicily and their families until the girls moved out of earshot. Then Pietro refilled their glasses, he asked, "Do you have any suspicions about Elsa's death?" He spoke as if he wasn't conducting an interrogation, but offering a confidence, and inviting Jose to share his thoughts; Jose thought the Section One investigator must be very good at his job.

He raised his glass to partly mask his face. "The question is, do you?"

"Yeah." Again in that tone that indicated Fermi was confiding to a friend. "I do. It all seems too neat and convenient."

Jose adopted a faintly mocking tone. "So you're thinking, what, a conspiracy?"

"A trained agent and his cyborg are killed, taken by surprise. There are almost no clues, no witnesses, and no evidence. No investigation to speak of. Suddenly they just know who did it. Case closed. What do you think?"

Despite a growing suspicion that Fermi was on track, Jose felt a need to play devil's advocate; despite a growing liking for the man, he didn't dare forget who Pietro Fermi worked for. "The cyborgs are good, but the enhancements don't work if they're not concentrating. The fratello was ambushed late at night in a park. If they didn't think they had a reason to be cautious …" It was a poor excuse, he knew; what were they doing in a park thirty kilometers from home so late at night if they hadn't been up to something that required caution?

Fermi wasn't buying it. "Jean told me that the girls are especially sensitive to any potential threat to their handlers. In the park, surrounded by Agency people, Rico was an Aegis Shield. Nothing was getting past _her_."

He stared into his glass. "Like I said, each of us trains his cyborg differently. Some are more effective than others. Elsa reacted, apparently. She just wasn't fast enough to get between." He started to take a drink, but stopped when Pietro's glass thumped down on the table.

"That just plain _stinks_." Fermi's mild manner was gone now. "Everybody at Section Two insists that 'the cyborg did the right thing'. Putting herself in the way of a bullet and dying for her handler. I can see where a certain sort of person might think so, but it's _wrong_. If Henrietta gave up her life to protect you, Jose, would that be 'the right thing'?" He leaned back. "I admit, I started this investigation disgusted by the idea of cyborgs – and for the sort of men who'd work with the undead things. Half-real creatures made with carbon fiber and electronics and stuff grown in vats…." He crossed his arms. "But they're not like that, are they? None of them. Under all that, they're just kids. Adolescent girls with crushes, who don't understand their feelings-" He smiled "-and don't know how to cook."

_Henrietta can't cook, and she sometimes has trouble remembering yesterday's conversations, but she can speak three languages, name every visible star in the sky, play violin as well as someone twice her age, and score 'expert' on the rifle and combat ranges. She's killed enough men to fill this room without the slightest remorse, but she can be crushed by an unkind word. Your image of them may be different from that of your colleagues', Fermi, but it's just as narrow. _Jose stared at the glass resting on his knees. "Like I said before, Pietro, if certain people didn't find them useful, they wouldn't exist. If we withdraw them from field operations and confine our use of them to the lab, we'll lose the support of the people who are keeping your boss from taking over Section Two. And if that happens, Pietro, what will happen to the cyborgs? There won't be any new ones made, surely, but what would he do with the others? Withhold their conditioning drugs so that their bodies destroy themselves? Keep them in cages until they die? Euthanize them? Or maybe just let his men use them for practice targets?"

Eleanora appeared at the doorway leading from the bedrooms. "Come outside, both of you, and bring a pistol."

-0-

After dinner, Elle and Henrietta retreated to Henrietta's room to give the men privacy to drink and talk – and to provide the girls privacy to talk as well. Elle took the room's only chair, sitting backwards with her forearms on the back in a very unladylike position; Henrietta unlaced her boots and took them off, then sat on the bed, swinging her stockinged feet in a display of nervous energy.

"Thank you, Eleanora," the child said. "For explaining to Jose."

Elle had given the two men a carefully edited account of the purse-snatcher incident, omitting her suspicions. "He seemed worried when we came back. I just put him at ease."

Henrietta swung her feet together and apart, together and apart; something about the motion reminded Eleanora of a dog's tail. "Sometimes, where Jose is concerned, I kind of act first and think later."

She thought of Rico in the park. The girl had been looking away from Pietro and her handler, scanning the treeline while Elle asked questions of Jean and jotted notes … and then she was standing between Pietro and Jean with a drawn gun pointed right at Elle's partner. If Pietro hadn't been smirking, Elle would have thought he was about to be shot. "This wasn't the first time?"

"I got into some trouble the first time Jose took me to a restaurant. The man who waited on us picked up a knife …" The girl's eyes dropped to her lap. "I know now he was just clearing the table, but when I saw that knife rising toward Jose's throat…"

Elle swallowed. "What happened?"

"Jose stopped me. He gave the man some money, and he paid the restaurant for the broken dishes, and we stayed for dessert. He teases me about it sometimes." Elle started to smile until the girl added, "But the other time, he had to abort a mission and call in a cleanup crew from the Agency to get rid of the bodies. He wasn't happy with me at all, I could tell." The girl's expression brightened. "They seemed to like the food, didn't they?"

Elle blinked at the abrupt change of subject. "With all the work you put into it, how could they not? Henrietta," she said, "I wanted to talk to you about the way you flew off today. I understand that your purse was important to you, but you shouldn't have threatened that man's life to get it back. It's not normal for young girls to go around killing people over cameras."

She'd expected Henrietta to act chastised and maybe a little embarrassed; instead, she watched the girl's face cloud with grief and hurt.

"Eleanora," Henrietta said in a heartbroken voice, "You're doing it too? Wishing I was a normal girl?" Her eyes filled with tears.

"You are a normal girl," Elle said automatically, and flushed at the obvious lie. But she'd been taken off-balance by the unexpected reaction. What was going on?

The little cyborg brushed at her leaking eyes with her wrist. "When we came here, Jose took my weapons away," she said, making it sound as if he'd shamed her. "He said normal girls don't carry them. I know he's right. So are you. But…" She covered her face in her hands, tears still dripping from her wrists and chin. "How can I be normal? I kill with my bare hands. I don't even bleed or feel pain, not the way normal people do. Sometimes I see things in my head, things that never really happened …" She shuddered. "I'm a cyborg. It's all I can ever be. I can never be what Jose wants, I'll never be good enough-"

"No, you're wrong!" Eleanora half rose from her chair, and Henrietta dropped her hands to stare. "He thinks the world of you." She got to her feet and went to the girl, kneeling in front of her. "He doesn't want you to be something you're not. He just wants to see you smile, and love life, and be everything you were meant to be."

But Henrietta didn't seem to be listening anymore. Her widening eyes dried. "Eleanora … I know what happened to Lauro and Elsa."

-0-

"Explain yourself," Jose said tensely, foreboding twisting his gut. He stood on a little square above the condo, a brick-paved open space with a railing guarding pedestrians from the steep dropoff to the road below. The sound of the sea came up to them, soft but clear against the silent background. Streetlights lit the pavement from half a dozen points, scattering and softening shadows. The four of them had the little plaza to themselves; no one else was even in sight. On either side of him were the Section One agents who'd come to uncover Section Two's dirty secrets - or so he'd thought at first.

Eleanora held Henrietta's pistol loosely by the frame in one hand. Henrietta had requested that they all meet her outside and bring it along, and he'd let Eleanora fetch it from the closet. But when the little cyborg had asked to hold it and Eleanora had moved to hand it over, he'd stopped her with a word and a gesture. He'd brought the gun out to get Henrietta talking, but he had no intention of putting it in her hand.

Henrietta looked up at them unblinking for a moment, then said, "Pietro, do you think Elsa loved Lauro?"

Pietro Fermi, staring down at the little cyborg, said, "I'd say so." No hedging about conditioning, Jose noted.

"Jose, did you ever see Lauro be nice to Elsa?"

'_Nice' to her. Not affection, just simple kindness one might show a stranger. _Very aware of the people flanking him, he said, "Not really. To Lauro, she just came with the job." _And not just Lauro,_ he thought. He remembered how he'd stepped in and pushed her away from her rifle without even looking at her. There hadn't been any ill will in it, it was just that they'd run out of time, and he was in a hurry, and…

And she'd been in the way. Not a part of the team anymore, not even a 'colleague', just an obstacle.

"That's how it happened," she said, and Jose felt a chill that had nothing to do with the damp night air. Henrietta stared blankly, her mind turned inward as she went on. "What if you loved someone, loved them more than life, loved them so much there was no room left in your heart for anything else ... but one day you realized they didn't love you at all, and never would?"

The world seemed to pause; even the sound of the surf disappeared from his hearing. Jose quit breathing, and tensed further, dreading what he was sure would come next. Years ago, when she'd had a different name, the one her parents had given her, she'd tried to kill herself. The Agency had erased those memories, but…

"If it was me," she said in a whisper, "I would kill that person."

_Kill? _The world seemed to wobble on its axis as his assumptions rearranged themselves. He almost didn't catch her next words.

"And then … I would do this."

Forewarned, he started moving toward the gun before she finished speaking, but he still wasn't fast enough. Next to him, Eleanora stumbled, her hand empty, and Henrietta was three steps away, pointing the pistol at her own eye. Jose lunged, hoping to spoil her aim, but she was too far away, and he knew he'd never reach her in time. Then a large hand appeared between them and slapped at the gun. Jose slammed into her and hit the pavement hard with her in his arms.

It took him a moment to recover his wits. He lifted his head from the pavement beside her, heart hammering. Had he heard a shot? He wasn't sure.

Henrietta lay under his arm, her hair obscuring her features. She turned her face to him, and he shook with relief to see that she was whole and unharmed, that he and Fermi had gotten the gun away from her in time.

She smiled - not her usual little-girl smile, but a woman's, knowing and intimate. "It's okay. I wasn't going to pull the trigger, you know. How could I ever leave someone as wonderful as you?"

The sick feeling returned. _If you can never leave me_, he thought, _how will I ever leave you?_

-0-

Eleanora dropped the cartridges from Henrietta's gun onto the table with a rattle. "I took them out because I wasn't sure how far her 'explanation' might go." She picked up her glass with both hands.

"Well, _that_ was terrifying." Pietro set the bottle down on the table a little harder than he'd intended. "Jose, you knew all along."

_Not quite._ Jose stood at the window, dividing his attention between the dark view outside and the visitors in the glass's reflection, sitting on the couches behind him with a couple of bottles. Henrietta was asleep in her room; she'd gone out like a light by the time Jose had carried her inside. _She's had a pretty big first day._

Eleanora stared at him over her glass. "It explains why you wanted to keep her away from her gun." She dropped her eyes to her drink. "'Love me or I'll kill us both.' Did she even realize she said it?"

"It wasn't a threat," Pietro said. "It was a warning. She saw the danger, and she had to let us know. Her conditioning." He spoke the word like a blasphemy.

"She's not really a little girl, is she? Holy Father."

"She's not just a little girl," Jose said to his reflection, too quietly for his guests to hear.

"This explains it all," Eleanora said. "The missing bullets, the mystery assassins, everything."

"I hated to think of that little girl taking a bullet for her handler," Pietro said. "This is worse."

Still staring at the window, Jose lifted his glass to his lips. "You going to report this?"

"Come on. There's not a shred of evidence left by now, I'm sure." Pietro spurned glass and ice and drank straight from the bottle. "If I say anything, it's just a crazy theory."

"What she did with the gun," Eleanora said. "So calculated. But … most times she seems so normal. So innocent."

"That's why it's so hard to get your head around," Pietro agreed. He reached into his coat pocket. "I meant to show you this earlier. I found it in Elsa's room. I'm pretty sure it's a picture of Lauro."

Eleanora studied the framed picture. "He didn't give her this. But it's all she ever got from him. This, and her name."

"He probably didn't give her that, either." Pietro stared at his knees. "I don't like him, but I think I can understand him. Imagine being absolutely everything to someone. Not the way you hear in love songs, but for real, the center of their universe. That kind of ... dependence … obsession …"

"Love," Eleanora murmured into her glass.

"If it was love, it was the kind that could eat you up alive. No wonder he was afraid to even give her a smile. How could a normal human being possibly accept it, deal with it …" His voice trailed off as Jose turned.

He met their eyes. "You try to earn it," he said. "They don't want so much, really." He glanced at Elsa's stolen picture. "You just … You have to be someone they can look up to. That, at the very least."

PLUS THREE

"_The man is impossible to talk to._" On Bianchi's computer screen, Triela's image sat backwards in a chair facing Bianchi's desk, straddling the chair's back and resting her forearms on top. She looked very at-home and comfortable in the Agency psychologist's office – as she should, Hilshire supposed, after talking with the man once a month for years. She rested her chin on her forearms. "_I should know, I've been trying forever._"

Hilshire felt heat touch his ears. _This is why his eyebrows twitch whenever I tell him how open she is with me._

The girl went on, "_It's not that he's aloof or distant or cold, nothing like that. But he never shares himself. When we're not talking about assignments, it's always generalities, if you know what I mean. He knows more about me than I do, but everything I know about him I've learned a little scrap at a time, stuff he drops by accident or a remark to someone else I overhear. Sometimes I want to just reach down his throat and pull the words out, you know?_" She looked off-screen at her unseen listener. "_It's not really because he's German, is it?_"

"_Not really,_" the doctor said. "_That's a stereotype, a greatly exaggerated cultural trait. Rather like the stories about hot-blooded Tunisian girls._"

She huffed at the lame jest. Hilshire didn't think it amusing at all; he was sure that that preconception was one reason Tunisian girls were so in-demand among human traffickers.

"_We were working this prisoner, just a Camorra suit, an enforcer type with a little information we wanted. I had him in an armlock with a gun in his back, and Hilshire was about to ask him some questions. He moved, stuck his other hand into his coat. What else could it be, right? So I shot him. Hilshire turned on me like I'd done it for fun or something. 'Don't pull another trigger unless I tell you to.'_

"_I know he didn't mean it, he was just surprised and upset. But I'd been chasing this guy for two blocks to bring him down, and he just didn't know when to quit. And it was that time of the month, which made everything worse, and I was feeling testy. So I shot back, 'Well, if it's a robot you want, why not just pump me full of conditioning drugs?'_

Her head rose. "_It was the only time I thought he might hit me. He actually raised his hand. Then he got himself back under control and told me to put the man in the car."_She rested her chin back on her forearms. _"That was when I realized the truth."_

_"Truth?"_

_"That Hilshire doesn't like cyborgs."_

_"Triela, I-"_

_"No, it's true. I'm not saying he hates any of us, nothing like that – it's the idea of cyborgs that he hates. He looks at me as if I'm a victim, as if creating me was some awful crime. But what would I be if I wasn't what I am?" _She shook her head. _"Grownups make such a big deal about what we've lost, what we're not. So we'll never grow, and we'll probably die before our handlers. What about it? They never give a thought to what we've been given, what we are that they can never be. I'm not talking about being able to see in the dark or bend tire irons. That's small stuff. I'm talking about…" _Her voice softened almost to a whisper. _"Having a purpose to your life as soon as you're born. Knowing what love is without any stupid heartbreaking mistakes. Discovering every day that you're more than you thought you were. What's a few extra years of blind groping compared to that?"_

_"Triela. What do you want to do with your life?"_

Her chin rose briefly off her forearms. _"That's not a question anyone asks a cyborg, ever."_

_"I'm asking."_

She looked offscreen, presumably straight at Bianchi. _"To fulfill my duty to the Agency and my handler. To find my full potential as a cyborg and a person." _Her chin dropped back on her forearms. _"To fight for him, to be everything he needs me to be, and when I die, to die with him. That's not too much to want, do you think?"_

-0-

Pietro was working at his desk in the middle of the day: a very rare occurrence, but his 'visit to his grandmother' had left him far behind on his paperwork, and he was eager to clear it away so he could get back out into the field. He didn't feel like he belonged in the squadroom, surrounded by agents who seldom left it and spent their days staring at reports or making phone calls or 'investigating' on the Internet. When he felt nearly caught up, he leaned back in his chair for a stretch, and noticed that the room had gone quiet.

A stranger stood with his back to Draghi's door, looking into the squadroom, apparently having just left the Director. He was about Pietro's age, but the conservative – and expensive – suit he wore under his trenchcoat made him seem older. The squadroom staff was very aware of him, but no one approached him or offered a greeting – didn't even acknowledge his presence overtly, just pretended he wasn't there while watching him from the corners of their eyes. They seemed, in fact, rather intimidated by his presence. A bigwig, he decided, probably from the Defense Department, which would explain why Pietro didn't recognize the man.

The man appeared to recognize Pietro, however; his eyes fastened on him from halfway across the room, and he began to march past rows of desks towards him. The workers at those desks stirred restlessly before putting their faces back to their monitors, except for a few who stared at the man's back – or at Pietro.

The man stopped at Pietro's desk. "Pietro Fermi?" He was tall, with dark hair and cool blue eyes. Pietro thought he caught a faint accent.

"Yes?"

"A word with you, please." He glanced around the squadroom. "In the hallway." He turned and headed for the exit without looking back to see if Pietro was following. The Section One agent stood and followed the mysterious authority figure out the door.

But, once in the hallway, the man kept walking down the corridor. Pietro followed him until it was clear the man was headed outside. He said, "Where are you taking me?"

"Just outside the front door," the man said without breaking stride. "Don't worry, Mr. Fermi, I won't keep you long." But he pulled his gloves from his coat pocket and put them on as he spoke.

The side entrance to Section One, the one that led to the parking lot, was covered by an awning that extended over a section of the drive, sheltering passengers getting into or out of cars in front of the entrance. Pietro's companion – if that was the proper term – went through the door and took three steps down the walk before stopping. Pietro stood with his hands in his pockets and his breath forming a cloud in front of his face. "All right," he said to the strange man, "can you tell me what this is about?"

The man turned and brought one hand out of his pocket with something in it and tossed it underhand to him: Eleanora's cell phone. "Anything you think you need to talk to Triela about, you talk to me."

Pietro Fermi looked from the phone in his hand to the stern-looking man standing before him. _Her handler. Elle said she'd like to meet him. But I doubt she imagines Triela's partner like this._ "So, you pick her friends for her?"

"I pick her clothing, Mr. Fermi."

"And buy her teddy bears."

_That _got a reaction. "That's right. Do you have something to say about that?" One gloved hand flexed, and then Pietro thought he knew why this man had led him outside, away from witnesses.

Pietro said, "I spoke with her in the course of my investigation. I'm sure you know about that. I left her the phone in case I had any follow-up questions. I saw the land line in her room, but frankly I wasn't sure the switchboard would put my call through. We spoke one time afterward, about a matter I thought was important to my investigation. And that's it. I didn't try to recruit her as a spy, Mr.-"

"Hilshire."

"She's just been a very helpful source when I have a question about cyborgs and fratelli. Not that Rico and Claes and Henrietta haven't been cooperative," he added, so that this man knew Pietro's attention hadn't been solely on his … _partner_? _Daughter?_ "Triela's just so sure of herself, it's easy to talk to her without a handler to cue her."

"I see. And what have you learned from talking to our cyborgs?"

Fermi stuck the phone in his shirt pocket. "A great deal. First and foremost, that they're very different from what I was led to believe."

"Oh? In what way?"

Pietro locked eyes with the handler. "They're people." A breath later, he added, "Second, that Elsa deserved better than she got from Lauro de Sica."

For the space of a deep breath, the two men studied each other in silence. "Mr. Fermi, have you ever seen Triela in the Section One squadroom?"

Pietro shook his head. "I may have a desk there, but I stay in the field as much as I can. What would she be doing there?"

"Waiting for me. But I don't take her there anymore. The last time, one of your colleagues … impugned her virtue."

Pietro felt his jaw muscles flex. "I see. And you thought I might be…"

"Yes." The man clasped his own hands, taking his right hand in his left, and removed his glove, then offered the bare hand. "Victor Hilshire."

Pietro removed his right hand from his pocket, and they clasped solidly. "Pietro Fermi. Good to meet you."

"And you." Hilshire nodded. "As I said before. If you have questions that need answered, talk to me. We might have some things to tell each other." From a pocket inside his coat, he produced a leather-covered notebook that was a smaller version of Eleanora's. He jotted something down, tore out the page, and handed it over. Pietro studied it: not a phone number, but an address. "It's a small, quiet bar just north of Vatican City. Nice place, keeps long hours, and the bartender will pass messages without looking at them. It seems to be a regular haunt of Section One agents - ones with an interest in Section Two, at least."

-0-

Hilshire opened the door to his apartment, half expecting to find Triela standing at the doorway waiting, or, failing that, to see her sitting on the couch watching television or fixing a snack in the kitchen. But when he opened the door, the sitting and eating areas were empty and silent.

His pulse quickened. He almost called her name. Instead, he reached under his jacket and drew out his P232 and closed the door silently behind him.

He listened: no water running. She could still be in the bathroom, of course. But opening _that_ door unannounced was his last option. He placed his hand on the knob to his bedroom door, turned it silently, and eased it open.

Triela lay on her back in the middle of his bed, arms outspread, one of her tails dangling off the edge. Her collar was open, and her vest and tie hung from the post at the foot of the bed. Her holster hung from the other. Her shoes were off and nowhere in sight. He watched her chest rise and fall, accompanied by a tiny snore. He relaxed and slipped his pistol back into its holster.

But some warning must have reached her sleeping mind, because she abruptly sat up, eyes wide, hand on her chest. Hilshire was dismayed to see spots of moisture appear on her trouser legs.

She dabbed at her eyes and started to swing her legs over the side of the bed. He held up a hand. "Stop. That's no way to wake up. Lie back down."

She lay back down, but didn't relax. "Sorry. I should have stayed on the couch."

"I told you to make yourself at home, didn't I?" Although he was glad she hadn't made herself any more comfortable. The fratelli were always grist for rumors at Public Safety; it wouldn't do for someone to 'drop in' and find his cyborg partner lying on his bed with her trousers off or - God forbid - under the covers. "We've been running all over central Italy all week. You have every right to be tired. Just rest for a bit. I didn't come in to change, I'm just picking up a few things."

He looked around for some reason to have come in here, besides searching for his partner with ice in his heart, and picked up his clothes brush. He gave his shoulders and lapels a few licks.

"Did you give her back her phone?"

"I gave it to your friend Fermi. I'm sure he'll see she gets it."

"He's not a friend, exactly."

"Oh? You have an exact definition?"

"You know what I mean."

"No," he said, holding back a smile, "I really don't. He's rather handsome, isn't he?"

"If you like the type."

"I see."

"Oh, please. He's from Section One."

"He seems to be developing an affinity for cyborgs. And the Chief offered him a job, I hear."

"Hm. And as soon as they give him a cyborg, she'll look daggers at me if we ever trade two words. Hilshire?"

Hilshire thought it rather amusing that, of all the cyborgs, his should choose to address her handler by his last name – since it wasn't really his. He looked at her reflection in the mirror: she lay with her eyes closed, fingers laced together on her sternum. "What?"

"How old do you think I am?"

The brush paused, then resumed. "What brought _that_ to mind?"

"I don't know… Don't you get odd thoughts sometimes when you first wake up?"

"Sometimes. If the waking is gradual. And when I'm about to fall asleep as well. You look about fourteen years old to me. Maybe fifteen, no more."

"But I've looked like this since we met, and we've been together, what, three years now? So I might be eighteen by now."

"Your life before the Agency is conjecture. What you remember is what counts, and by that measure you're three years old."

"You don't treat me like a three-year-old."

"Well, there are times I think I should." He removed his tie, folded it carefully, and selected another.

As he drew the tie around his neck, she said, "Was your father English?"

"No. Why do you ask?"

"Because Hilshire isn't German."

"I was born Victor Hartmann. I changed my name when I joined the Agency."

"Secret organization, secret identity," she murmured. It seemed she was getting sleepy again. If she dropped off, he decided, he'd stretch out on the couch for awhile. Their business wasn't that pressing.

"I dream about my mother sometimes," she said. "Did I ever tell you?"

He stopped knotting his tie. "No."

"I know I'm not supposed to remember. They're probably just dreams. But they're always the same, and so vivid. Sometimes when I wake up, I can still smell her perfume… Hilshire?"

"Yes?"

"That morning you picked me up and brought me here. In the car, I was sure I smelled perfume on you. Do you have a girlfriend?"

"No." He finished knotting his tie and pulled it snug. "Since I took this job, I don't get to see my family much. Not just because the work claims my life - it would be dangerous to let our enemies discover them. I have to be very cautious. So I don't visit at home. My sister called to tell me she was staying the night at a hotel just across the border in Nice, so I drove there to meet her. Before we'd finished our hellos, Director Lorenzo called with orders to go to Section Two the next morning. We stayed up all night, and I left before dawn and drove straight to the Agency to pick you up."

"I see. You can't have had much time with her."

"The trip was longer than the visit, I'm afraid. The coast road would have been a pleasant drive, at least, if most of it hadn't been in the dark. Our next vacation, perhaps you'd like to go to Nice."

"It sounds wonderful. I could practice my French." She shifted, settling into the mattress. He thought she was asleep until she murmured, "If you ever fall in love, you should tell me."

He nodded, even though her eyes were closed. "I will." He opened the door quietly and left, drawing it shut behind him.

Triela curled on her side, pulled the big soft pillow to her, and sighed with contentment. That was the problem with handlers, she thought. Every one of them. They just didn't know how to live.

-0-

Jose leaned back on his elbows, staring out over the grassy tiers of the old Greek amphitheater. "You're pretty quiet. Are you bored?"

"No," Henrietta said beside him as she shared the view, watching the adults chatting and kids racing up and down. Her camera rested in her lap. "I'm happy. You and Jean really played here?"

"From one end to the other, since we were your age – even younger. I'm sure we both sat right where you are now."

"I'm having trouble imagining that."

"Why? We came here every summer for years, and played here almost every day. We must have walked or sat on every square centimeter of this place."

"No. I mean … Jean, being my age."

He smiled. "Well, he was a boy. He was different then."

"Were you?"

"I'm sure I was." Jose looked up at the sky to watch the clouds drifting by and the gulls beating against the breeze. _You gave her this life. Whether it was an act of charity or selfishness, it's done now, and you have to see it through._ _To have and to hold, for better or for worse, till death do you part._


	14. The End and the Beginning

Elsa was lost in a snowstorm. Only, there wasn't any snow, just tiny dots of light like silver fireflies that fell to the ground and disappeared. Only, the ground wasn't ground; it was white and kind of bright and difficult to see, because it was blank and featureless as a floor. But it wasn't a floor, because she was out in the open, or at least she thought she was: everything disappeared into vague whiteness some unguessable distance away.

And she wasn't really lost; she didn't know where this was, but she was sure somehow that she was supposed to be here.

"Hello?" She said. No echoes; distance and the strange snow seemed to swallow her voice. She turned around, and everything was the same wherever she looked.

"It's normal to be confused at first," said a voice right behind her. She started and spun, but before she completed the turn, she recognized the voice – how could she not?

"Lauro," she breathed.

He was clean and not disfigured, impossibly alive, as she was. The silver snow disappeared as it touched him. She couldn't tell what he was wearing; perhaps he wasn't wearing anything at all. She looked down at herself and was confounded again.

"This is just a transitional state," he said. "You'll understand more later."

"How… how long have you been here?"

"Not long. Just a minute. Or maybe a thousand years. The rules are different here." He looked down on her, his expression unreadable. "I wasn't sure you'd come, at first."

She looked up at him with a vague fear in her heart. "Are you angry with me?"

"Yes," he said. "Very, very angry." He went down on one knee and wrapped his arms tight around her.

She didn't struggle, not against _him_, but she moved a bit to test his strength, and knew she was pinned. Why was she so weak?

"There's nothing wrong," he said softly, his lips almost touching her ear. "You don't need implants anymore." Then she felt his hand at the side of her head, pressing her cheek and ear into his shoulder. "Do you remember what it was like, to just be a little girl?"

She did. She remembered everything. But none of it was important compared to this moment. "Yes."

He stood, lifting her off her feet. She gasped. "Your back."

"That's over with too," he said, and kissed her forehead. His hold shifted, turning her sideways. An arm went under her knees and another around her shoulders, releasing her arms but still holding her close. He _smiled _at her. She gasped again; she had never seen anything so beautiful. "It's not far. I'll carry you, until you're not so frightened."

The shining snowfall thickened around them, filling her eyes with light. She slipped her arms around his neck as they started off. "I'm not afraid at all. Maybe for the first time ever."


End file.
